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From: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
To: Eric Dumazet <eric.dumazet@gmail.com>
Cc: Herbert Xu <herbert@gondor.apana.org.au>,
	Alan Stern <stern@rowland.harvard.edu>,
	"Paul E. McKenney" <paulmck@linux.ibm.com>,
	Boqun Feng <boqun.feng@gmail.com>,
	Frederic Weisbecker <fweisbec@gmail.com>,
	Fengguang Wu <fengguang.wu@intel.com>, LKP <lkp@01.org>,
	LKML <linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org>,
	Netdev <netdev@vger.kernel.org>,
	"David S. Miller" <davem@davemloft.net>,
	Andrea Parri <andrea.parri@amarulasolutions.com>,
	Luc Maranget <luc.maranget@inria.fr>,
	Jade Alglave <j.alglave@ucl.ac.uk>
Subject: Re: inet: frags: Turn fqdir->dead into an int for old Alphas
Date: Fri, 7 Jun 2019 09:19:42 -0700	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <CAHk-=wgtY1hNQX9TM=4ono-UJ-hsoFA0OT36ixFWBG2eeO011w@mail.gmail.com> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <da5eedfe-92f9-6c50-b9e7-68886047dd25@gmail.com>

On Fri, Jun 7, 2019 at 8:26 AM Eric Dumazet <eric.dumazet@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> There is common knowledge among us programmers that bit fields
> (or bool) sharing a common 'word' need to be protected
> with a common lock.
>
> Converting all bit fields to plain int/long would be quite a waste of memory.

Yeah, and we really don't care about alpha. So 'char' should be safe.

No compiler actually turns a 'bool' in a struct into a bitfield,
afaik, because you're still supposed to be able to take the address of
a boolean.

But on the whole, I do not believe that we should ever use 'bool' in
structures anyway, because it's such a badly defined type. I think
it's 'char' in practice on just about all architectures, but there
really were traditional use cases where 'bool' was int.

But:

 - we shouldn't turn them into 'int' anyway - alpha is dead, and no
sane architecture will make the same mistake anyway. People learnt.

 - we might want to make sure 'bool' really is 'char' in practice, to
double-check that fthe compiler doesn't do anything stupid.

 - bitfields obviously do need locks. 'char' does not.

If there's somebody who really notices the alpha issue in PRACTICE, we
can then bother to fix it. But there is approximately one user, and
it's not a heavy-duty one.

                   Linus

  parent reply	other threads:[~2019-06-07 16:20 UTC|newest]

Thread overview: 62+ messages / expand[flat|nested]  mbox.gz  Atom feed  top
2015-09-10  0:57 [rcu] kernel BUG at include/linux/pagemap.h:149! Fengguang Wu
2015-09-10 10:25 ` Boqun Feng
2015-09-10 17:16   ` Paul E. McKenney
2015-09-11  2:19     ` Boqun Feng
     [not found]       ` <CAJzB8QG=1iZW3dQEie6ZSTLv8GZ3YSut0aL1VU7LLmiHQ1B1DQ@mail.gmail.com>
2015-09-11 21:59         ` Paul E. McKenney
2015-09-12  5:46           ` Boqun Feng
2015-09-21 19:30       ` Frederic Weisbecker
2015-09-21 20:43         ` Paul E. McKenney
2019-06-02  5:56           ` rcu_read_lock lost its compiler barrier Herbert Xu
2019-06-02 20:54             ` Linus Torvalds
2019-06-03  2:46               ` Herbert Xu
2019-06-03  3:47                 ` Paul E. McKenney
2019-06-03  4:01                   ` Herbert Xu
2019-06-03  4:17                     ` Herbert Xu
2019-06-03  7:23                     ` Paul E. McKenney
2019-06-03  8:42                       ` Paul E. McKenney
2019-06-03 15:26                         ` David Laight
2019-06-03 15:40                           ` Linus Torvalds
2019-06-03  5:26                   ` Herbert Xu
2019-06-03  6:42                     ` Boqun Feng
2019-06-03 20:03                       ` Paul E. McKenney
2019-06-04 14:44                         ` Alan Stern
2019-06-04 16:04                           ` Linus Torvalds
2019-06-04 17:00                             ` Alan Stern
2019-06-04 17:29                               ` Linus Torvalds
2019-06-07 14:09                             ` inet: frags: Turn fqdir->dead into an int for old Alphas Herbert Xu
2019-06-07 15:26                               ` Eric Dumazet
2019-06-07 15:32                                 ` Herbert Xu
2019-06-07 16:13                                   ` Eric Dumazet
2019-06-07 16:19                                 ` Linus Torvalds [this message]
2019-06-08 15:27                                   ` Paul E. McKenney
2019-06-08 17:42                                     ` Linus Torvalds
2019-06-08 17:50                                       ` Linus Torvalds
2019-06-08 18:50                                         ` Paul E. McKenney
2019-06-08 18:14                                       ` Paul E. McKenney
2019-06-06  4:51                           ` rcu_read_lock lost its compiler barrier Herbert Xu
2019-06-06  6:05                             ` Paul E. McKenney
2019-06-06  6:14                               ` Herbert Xu
2019-06-06  9:06                                 ` Paul E. McKenney
2019-06-06  9:28                                   ` Herbert Xu
2019-06-06 10:58                                     ` Paul E. McKenney
2019-06-06 13:38                                       ` Herbert Xu
2019-06-06 13:48                                         ` Paul E. McKenney
2019-06-06  8:16                           ` Andrea Parri
2019-06-06 14:19                             ` Alan Stern
2019-06-08 15:19                               ` Paul E. McKenney
2019-06-08 15:56                                 ` Alan Stern
2019-06-08 16:31                                   ` Paul E. McKenney
2019-06-03  9:35                     ` Paul E. McKenney
2019-06-06  8:38                 ` Andrea Parri
2019-06-06  9:32                   ` Herbert Xu
2019-06-03  0:06             ` Paul E. McKenney
2019-06-03  3:03               ` Herbert Xu
2019-06-03  9:27                 ` Paul E. McKenney
2019-06-03 15:55                 ` Linus Torvalds
2019-06-03 16:07                   ` Linus Torvalds
2019-06-03 19:53                     ` Paul E. McKenney
2019-06-03 20:24                       ` Linus Torvalds
2019-06-04 21:14                         ` Paul E. McKenney
2019-06-05  2:21                           ` Herbert Xu
2019-06-05  3:30                             ` Paul E. McKenney
2019-06-06  4:37                               ` Herbert Xu

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