Re: [PATCH] staging: greybus: fix gb_loopback_stats_attrs definition

From: Joe Perches <joe@perches.com>
To: Alex Elder <elder@ieee.org>, Greg KH <gregkh@linuxfoundation.org>,
	 Shreyansh Chouhan <chouhan.shreyansh630@gmail.com>
Cc: pure.logic@nexus-software.ie, johan@kernel.org, elder@kernel.org,
	 greybus-dev@lists.linaro.org, linux-staging@lists.linux.dev,
	 linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org
Subject: Re: [PATCH] staging: greybus: fix gb_loopback_stats_attrs definition
Date: Fri, 14 May 2021 12:32:39 -0700	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <89a62ed669547eb989dd008b67165f3d0c9f4265.camel@perches.com> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <88d7da63-d03c-7fa3-a881-aff8e7b4a618@ieee.org>

On Fri, 2021-05-14 at 13:53 -0500, Alex Elder wrote:
> On 5/14/21 10:56 AM, Joe Perches wrote:
> > On Fri, 2021-05-14 at 17:30 +0200, Greg KH wrote:
> > > On Fri, May 14, 2021 at 08:42:16PM +0530, Shreyansh Chouhan wrote:
> > []
> > > > I didn't look at how/where was the macro called and missed a very
> > > > obvious error. Now that I have looked at it, the only way I can think of
> > > > fixing this is changing the macro to a (inline?) function. Will
> > > > that be a desirable change?
> > > 
> > > No, it can't be a function, the code is fine as-is, checkpatch is just a
> > > perl script and does not always know what needs to be done.
> > 
> > true.
> > 
> > perhaps better though to rename these declaring macros to start with declare_
> 
> I don't disagree with your suggestion, but it's not clear it
> would have prevented submission of the erroneous initial patch
> (nor future ones from people who blindly follow checkpatch.pl
> suggestions).

With my checkpatch maintainer hat on:

Yeah Alex, I know.  checkpatch can't teach people c either.
There's not much to do other than try to make the code clearer.
Adding exceptions to checkpatch only leads to other exceptions
and false negatives...

> PS  Lots of negatives in that sentence.

Only positives...

cheers, Joe