diff mbox series

[4.4,60/86] gcc-10: disable array-bounds warning for now

Message ID 20200518173502.586773004@linuxfoundation.org
State Superseded
Headers show
Series None | expand

Commit Message

Greg KH May 18, 2020, 5:36 p.m. UTC 
From: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>

commit 44720996e2d79e47d508b0abe99b931a726a3197 upstream.

This is another fine warning, related to the 'zero-length-bounds' one,
but hitting the same historical code in the kernel.

Because C didn't historically support flexible array members, we have
code that instead uses a one-sized array, the same way we have cases of
zero-sized arrays.

The one-sized arrays come from either not wanting to use the gcc
zero-sized array extension, or from a slight convenience-feature, where
particularly for strings, the size of the structure now includes the
allocation for the final NUL character.

So with a "char name[1];" at the end of a structure, you can do things
like

       v = my_malloc(sizeof(struct vendor) + strlen(name));

and avoid the "+1" for the terminator.

Yes, the modern way to do that is with a flexible array, and using
'offsetof()' instead of 'sizeof()', and adding the "+1" by hand.  That
also technically gets the size "more correct" in that it avoids any
alignment (and thus padding) issues, but this is another long-term
cleanup thing that will not happen for 5.7.

So disable the warning for now, even though it's potentially quite
useful.  Having a slew of warnings that then hide more urgent new issues
is not an improvement.

Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@linuxfoundation.org>

---
 Makefile |    1 +
 1 file changed, 1 insertion(+)
diff mbox series

Patch

--- a/Makefile
+++ b/Makefile
@@ -797,6 +797,7 @@  KBUILD_CFLAGS += $(call cc-disable-warni
 
 # We'll want to enable this eventually, but it's not going away for 5.7 at least
 KBUILD_CFLAGS += $(call cc-disable-warning, zero-length-bounds)
+KBUILD_CFLAGS += $(call cc-disable-warning, array-bounds)
 
 # Enabled with W=2, disabled by default as noisy
 KBUILD_CFLAGS += $(call cc-disable-warning, maybe-uninitialized)