Re: [PATCH 2/8] media: v4l2-ioctl.h: convert debug into an enum of bits

[Laurent Pinchart <laurent.pinchart@ideasonboard.com>]

On Tuesday, 19 December 2017 13:39:27 EET Sakari Ailus wrote:
> Hi Mauro,
> 
> On Mon, Dec 18, 2017 at 05:53:56PM -0200, Mauro Carvalho Chehab wrote:
> > The V4L2_DEV_DEBUG_IOCTL macros actually define a bitmask,
> > but without using Kernel's modern standards. Also,
> > documentation looks akward.
> > 
> > So, convert them into an enum with valid bits, adding
> > the correspoinding kernel-doc documentation for it.
> 
> The pattern of using bits for flags is a well established one and I
> wouldn't deviate from that by requiring the use of the BIT() macro. There
> are no benefits that I can see from here but the approach brings additional
> risks: misuse of the flags and mimicing the same risky pattern.
> 
> I'd also like to echo Laurent's concern that code is being changed in odd
> ways and not for itself, but due to deficiencies in documentation tools.
> 
> I believe the tooling has to be improved to address this properly. That
> only needs to done once, compared to changing all flag definitions to
> enums.

That's my main concern too. We really must not sacrifice code readability or 
writing ease in order to work around limitations of the documentation system. 
For this reason I'm strongly opposed to patches 2 and 5 in this series.

> Another point I want to make is that the uAPI definitions cannot be
> changed: enums are thus an option in kAPI only.

And furthermore using enum types in the uAPI is a bad idea as the enum size is 
architecture-dependent. That's why we use integer types in structures used as 
ioctl arguments.

> Improved KernelDoc tools would thus also allow improving uAPI macro
> documentation --- which is more important anyway.

-- 
Regards,

Laurent Pinchart