• Linus Torvalds's avatar
    gcc-10: disable 'restrict' warning for now · adc71920
    Linus Torvalds authored
    gcc-10 now warns about passing aliasing pointers to functions that take
    restricted pointers.
    
    That's actually a great warning, and if we ever start using 'restrict'
    in the kernel, it might be quite useful.  But right now we don't, and it
    turns out that the only thing this warns about is an idiom where we have
    declared a few functions to be "printf-like" (which seems to make gcc
    pick up the restricted pointer thing), and then we print to the same
    buffer that we also use as an input.
    
    And people do that as an odd concatenation pattern, with code like this:
    
        #define sysfs_show_gen_prop(buffer, fmt, ...) \
            snprintf(buffer, PAGE_SIZE, "%s"fmt, buffer, __VA_ARGS__)
    
    where we have 'buffer' as both the destination of the final result, and
    as the initial argument.
    
    Yes, it's a bit questionable.  And outside of the kernel, people do have
    standard declarations like
    
        int snprintf( char *restrict buffer, size_t bufsz,
                      const char *restrict format, ... );
    
    where that output buffer is marked as a restrict pointer that cannot
    alias with any other arguments.
    
    But in the context of the kernel, that 'use snprintf() to concatenate to
    the end result' does work, and the pattern shows up in multiple places.
    And we have not marked our own version of snprintf() as taking restrict
    pointers, so the warning is incorrect for now, and gcc picks it up on
    its own.
    
    If we do start using 'restrict' in the kernel (and it might be a good
    idea if people find places where it matters), we'll need to figure out
    how to avoid this issue for snprintf and friends.  But in the meantime,
    this warning is not useful.
    Signed-off-by: default avatarLinus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
    adc71920
Makefile 60.3 KB