Re: [PATCH] xarray: Add a BUG_ON() to ensure caller is not sibling

From: David Hildenbrand
Date: Tue Jun 03 2025 - 03:58:46 EST


On 03.06.25 07:23, Dev Jain wrote:

On 02/06/25 8:33 pm, Zi Yan wrote:
On 29 May 2025, at 23:44, Dev Jain wrote:

On 30/05/25 4:17 am, Zi Yan wrote:
On 28 May 2025, at 23:17, Dev Jain wrote:

On 28/05/25 10:42 pm, Zi Yan wrote:
On 28 May 2025, at 7:31, Dev Jain wrote:

Suppose xas is pointing somewhere near the end of the multi-entry batch.
Then it may happen that the computed slot already falls beyond the batch,
thus breaking the loop due to !xa_is_sibling(), and computing the wrong
order. Thus ensure that the caller is aware of this by triggering a BUG
when the entry is a sibling entry.
Is it possible to add a test case in lib/test_xarray.c for this?
You can compile the tests with “make -C tools/testing/radix-tree”
and run “./tools/testing/radix-tree/xarray”.
Sorry forgot to Cc you.
I can surely do that later, but does this patch look fine?
I am not sure the exact situation you are describing, so I asked you
to write a test case to demonstrate the issue. :)

Suppose we have a shift-6 node having an order-9 entry => 8 - 1 = 7 siblings,
so assume the slots are at offset 0 till 7 in this node. If xas->xa_offset is 6,
then the code will compute order as 1 + xas->xa_node->shift = 7. So I mean to
say that the order computation must start from the beginning of the multi-slot
entries, that is, the non-sibling entry.
Got it. Thanks for the explanation. It will be great to add this explanation
to the commit log.

I also notice that in the comment of xas_get_order() it says
“Called after xas_load()” and xas_load() returns NULL or an internal
entry for a sibling. So caller is responsible to make sure xas is not pointing
to a sibling entry. It is good to have a check here.

In terms of the patch, we are moving away from BUG()/BUG_ON(), so I wonder
if there is a less disruptive way of handling this. Something like return
-EINVAL instead with modified function comments and adding a comment
at the return -EIVAL saying something like caller needs to pass
a non-sibling entry.

What's the reason for moving away from BUG_ON()?

BUG_ON is in general a bad thing. See Documentation/process/coding-style.rst and the history on the related changes for details.

Here, it is less critical than it looks.

XA_NODE_BUG_ON is only active with XA_DEBUG.

And XA_DEBUG is only defined in

tools/testing/shared/xarray-shared.h:#define XA_DEBUG

So IIUC, it's only active in selftests, and completely inactive in any kernel builds.

--
Cheers,

David / dhildenb