Re: [PATCH 1/1] Fonts: font_acorn_8x8: Replace discarded const qualifier

From: Russell King - ARM Linux admin
Date: Mon Nov 02 2020 - 05:23:54 EST


On Sun, Nov 01, 2020 at 01:11:22PM +0000, Lee Jones wrote:
> On Sat, 31 Oct 2020, Russell King - ARM Linux admin wrote:
>
> > On Fri, Oct 30, 2020 at 06:18:22PM +0000, Lee Jones wrote:
> > > Commit 09e5b3fd5672 ("Fonts: Support FONT_EXTRA_WORDS macros for
> >
> > Your commit ID does not exist in mainline kernels, which makes this
> > confusing. The commit ID you should be using is 6735b4632def.
>
> Ah yes, quite right. That is the ID from android-3.18 where this
> issue was first seen and fixed against. I will fix it up for
> Mainline.
>
> Does the fix look okay to you though Russell?

Frankly, I don't know. Looking at the commit itself, it looks safe,
but it depends what this "extra" data is being used for. From what
I can see, the commit in question just adds the additional opaque
data as a member named "extra", and one is left to guess what it's
use as.

I'd have thought a small structure with named members would have
been the minimum given our standards for in-kernel code.

Why was the "const" dropped in the first place? Does this "extra"
member get written to somewhere?

So, sorry, no idea. This looks to me like a very unsatisfactory
commit, and probably something that got a very poor review.

--
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