Re: [PATCH] predefine: add a macro telling about named address spaces

[Luc Van Oostenryck <luc.vanoostenryck@gmail.com>]

On Tue, Jun 16, 2020 at 12:13:18PM -0700, Linus Torvalds wrote:
> On Mon, Jun 15, 2020 at 5:50 PM Luc Van Oostenryck
> <luc.vanoostenryck@gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > Sparse supports named address spaces since v0.6.0-rc1.
> > This gives much nicer warnings ('... __user' instead of '... <asn:1>')
> > but this featres is not yet used in the kernel since it could be
> > a problem for people using an older version of Sparse.
> 
> Actually, I think it's more that nobody has sent a tested patch.

Yes, I should have done this many months ago. I admit that it bothers
me when people complain that something doesn't work with sparse and
it's just that they using an old version (sometimes quite old).
 
> I don't think it's a big burden to say "you need a newer version of
> sparse" for kernel checkers, and in fact a number of the problems
> people report then get answered with "update your sparse version"
> anyway for other reasons.
> 
> In fact, I'd personally like to just make the kernel use _Generic()
> everywhere now that we started getting our toes wet, but the fact that
> we would have to require gcc-4.9 (instead of gcc-4.8 which is
> currently the minimum version) is holding us back.
> 
> So I'd be perfectly happy to take a patch to do the ASN names, and to
> remove the __CHECKER__ thing that holds us back from using _Generic()
> with sparse. And just document that you need to have a recent enough
> release..

OK. The one for the ASNs is already prepared anyway and I'll do the
one for _Generic() tomorrow.

-- Luc