Re: [PATCH 1/1] linux/container_of.h: Warn about loss of constness

[Rafael J. Wysocki]

On Mon, Oct 24, 2022 at 7:39 PM Kees Cook <keescook@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> On Mon, Oct 24, 2022 at 12:00:16PM +0300, Andy Shevchenko wrote:
> > + Kees
> >
> > On Mon, Oct 24, 2022 at 10:45:25AM +0200, Greg Kroah-Hartman wrote:
> > > On Mon, Oct 24, 2022 at 10:43:52AM +0200, Greg Kroah-Hartman wrote:
> > > > On Mon, Oct 24, 2022 at 11:26:10AM +0300, Sakari Ailus wrote:
> > > > > container_of() casts the original type to another which leads to the loss
> > > > > of the const qualifier if it is not specified in the caller-provided type.
> > > > > This easily leads to container_of() returning a non-const pointer to a
> > > > > const struct which the C compiler does not warn about.
> >
> > ...
> >
> > > > >   * @type:      the type of the container struct this is embedded in.
> > > > >   * @member:    the name of the member within the struct.
> > > > >   *
> > > > > + * WARNING: as container_of() casts the given struct to another, also the
> > >
> > > Wrong function name here.
> > >
> > > > > + * possible const qualifier of @ptr is lost unless it is also specified in
> > > > > + * @type. This is not a problem if the containing object is not const. Use with
> > > > > + * care.
> > > >
> > > > Same comments here.
> > >
> > > Wait, no one uses this macro, so why not just remove it entirely?
> >
> > Kees, do you know why and what for we have container_of_safe()?
>
> It looks like it was designed to handle the cases where the pointer was
> ERR_OR_NULL:
>
>        IS_ERR_OR_NULL(__mptr) ? ERR_CAST(__mptr) : \
>                ((type *)(__mptr - offsetof(type, member))); })
>
> i.e. just pass through the NULL/ERR instead of attempting the cast,
> which would fail spectacularly. :)
>
> It seems like this version should actually be used everywhere instead of
> nowhere... (i.e. just drop container_of() and rename container_of_safe()
> to container_of())

As a rule, though, users of container_of() don't check the pointer
returned by it against NULL, so I'm not sure how much of an
improvement that would be.

If NULL is passed to container_of(), there will be a spectacular
failure, sooner or later ...