[tip: locking/core] locking/lockdep: Replace zero-length array with flexible-array

From: tip-bot2 for Gustavo A. R. Silva
Date: Tue May 19 2020 - 14:44:45 EST


The following commit has been merged into the locking/core branch of tip:

Commit-ID: db78538c75e49c09b002a2cd96a19ae0c39be771
Gitweb: https://git.kernel.org/tip/db78538c75e49c09b002a2cd96a19ae0c39be771
Author: Gustavo A. R. Silva <gustavoars@xxxxxxxxxx>
AuthorDate: Thu, 07 May 2020 13:58:04 -05:00
Committer: Peter Zijlstra <peterz@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
CommitterDate: Tue, 19 May 2020 20:34:18 +02:00

locking/lockdep: Replace zero-length array with flexible-array

The current codebase makes use of the zero-length array language
extension to the C90 standard, but the preferred mechanism to declare
variable-length types such as these ones is a flexible array member[1][2],
introduced in C99:

struct foo {
int stuff;
struct boo array[];
};

By making use of the mechanism above, we will get a compiler warning
in case the flexible array does not occur last in the structure, which
will help us prevent some kind of undefined behavior bugs from being
inadvertently introduced[3] to the codebase from now on.

Also, notice that, dynamic memory allocations won't be affected by
this change:

"Flexible array members have incomplete type, and so the sizeof operator
may not be applied. As a quirk of the original implementation of
zero-length arrays, sizeof evaluates to zero."[1]

sizeof(flexible-array-member) triggers a warning because flexible array
members have incomplete type[1]. There are some instances of code in
which the sizeof operator is being incorrectly/erroneously applied to
zero-length arrays and the result is zero. Such instances may be hiding
some bugs. So, this work (flexible-array member conversions) will also
help to get completely rid of those sorts of issues.

This issue was found with the help of Coccinelle.

[1] https://gcc.gnu.org/onlinedocs/gcc/Zero-Length.html
[2] https://github.com/KSPP/linux/issues/21
[3] commit 76497732932f ("cxgb3/l2t: Fix undefined behaviour")

Signed-off-by: Gustavo A. R. Silva <gustavoars@xxxxxxxxxx>
Signed-off-by: Peter Zijlstra (Intel) <peterz@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Link: https://lkml.kernel.org/r/20200507185804.GA15036@embeddedor
---
kernel/locking/lockdep.c | 2 +-
1 file changed, 1 insertion(+), 1 deletion(-)

diff --git a/kernel/locking/lockdep.c b/kernel/locking/lockdep.c
index ac10db6..cfdff12 100644
--- a/kernel/locking/lockdep.c
+++ b/kernel/locking/lockdep.c
@@ -489,7 +489,7 @@ struct lock_trace {
struct hlist_node hash_entry;
u32 hash;
u32 nr_entries;
- unsigned long entries[0] __aligned(sizeof(unsigned long));
+ unsigned long entries[] __aligned(sizeof(unsigned long));
};
#define LOCK_TRACE_SIZE_IN_LONGS \
(sizeof(struct lock_trace) / sizeof(unsigned long))