Re: [PATCH v4 8/8] mm: Mark anonymous struct field of 'struct vm_fault' as 'const'

[Nick Desaulniers <ndesaulniers@google.com>]

On Thu, Jan 21, 2021 at 1:28 PM Will Deacon <will@kernel.org> wrote:
>
> On Thu, Jan 21, 2021 at 11:24:36AM -0800, Nick Desaulniers wrote:
> > On Thu, Jan 21, 2021 at 5:11 AM Will Deacon <will@kernel.org> wrote:
> > >
> > > On Wed, Jan 20, 2021 at 11:02:06AM -0800, Linus Torvalds wrote:
> > > > On Wed, Jan 20, 2021 at 10:27 AM Nick Desaulniers
> > > > <ndesaulniers@google.com> wrote:
> > > > >
> > > > > Is there a difference between: [ const unnamed struct and individual const members ]
> > > >
> > > > Semantically? No.
> > > >
> > > > Syntactically the "group the const members together" is a lot cleaner,
> > > > imho. Not just from a "just a single const" standpoint, but from a
> > > > "code as documentation" standpoint.
> > > >
> > > > But I guess to avoid the clang issue, we could do the "mark individual
> > > > fields" thing.
> > >
> > > I'd prefer to wait until the bug against LLVM has been resolved before we
> > > try to work around anything. Although I couldn't find any other examples
> > > like this in the kernel, requiring all of the member fields to be marked as
> > > 'const' still feels pretty fragile to me; it's only a matter of time before
> > > new non-const fields get added, at which point the temptation for developers
> > > to remove 'const' from other fields when it gets in the way is pretty high.
> >
> > What's to stop a new non-const field from getting added outside the
> > const qualified anonymous struct?
> > What's to stop someone from removing const from the anonymous struct?
> > What's to stop a number of callers from manipulating the structure
> > temporarily before restoring it when returning by casting away the
> > const?
> >
> > Code review.
>
> Sure, but here we are cleaning up this stuff, so I think review only gets
> you so far. To me:
>
>         const struct {
>                 int     foo;
>                 long    bar;
>         };
>
> clearly says "don't modify fields of this struct", whereas:
>
>         struct {
>                 const int       foo;
>                 const long      bar;
>         };
>
> says "don't modify foo or bar, but add whatever you like on the end" and
> that's the slippery slope.

"but you could add additional non-const members on the end" for sure.
Though going back to

>> What's to stop a new non-const field from getting added outside the
> > const qualified anonymous struct?

my point with that is that the const anonymous struct is within a
non-const anonymous struct.

struct vm_fault {
  const {
    struct vm_area_struct *vma;
    gfp_t gfp_mask;
    pgoff_t pgoff;
    unsigned long address;
    // Your point is about new member additions here, IIUC
  };
  // My point: what's to stop someone from adding a new non-const member here?
  unsigned int flags;
  pmd_t *pmd;
  pud_t *pud;
  ...
  // or here?
};

The const anonymous struct will help prevent additions of non-const
members to the anonymous struct, sure; but if someone really wanted a
new non-const member in a `struct vm_fault` instance they're just
going to go around the const anonymous struct.  Or is there something
more I'm missing about the order of the members of struct vm_fault?

> So then we end up with the eye-sore of:
>
>         const struct {
>                 const int       foo;
>                 const long      bar;
>         };
>
> and maybe that's the right answer, but I'm just saying we should wait for
> clang to make up its mind first. It's not like this is a functional problem,
> and there are enough GCC users around that we're not exactly in a hurry.

Yeah, I mean I'm happy to whip something up for Clang, even though I
suspect it will get shot down in code review until there's more
guidance from standards bodies.  It doesn't hurt to try, and at least
have a patch "waiting in the wings" should we hear back from WG14 that
favors GCC's behavior.  Who knows, maybe the guidance will be that
WG21 should revisit this behavior for C++ to avoid divergence with C
(as g++ and gcc currently do).
-- 
Thanks,
~Nick Desaulniers