Brandon Williams <bmwill@xxxxxxxxxx> writes: > One simple idea would be to convert the single 'flag' into various bit > fields themselves, that way if you need to add a new flag you would just > make a new bit field. I'm unaware of any downsides of doing so (though > i may be missing something) but doing so would probably cause a bit of > code churn. The reason why people want to have their own bit in the flags word is because they want to use DIFF_OPT_{SET,CLR,TST,TOUCHED} but they do not want to do the work to extend them beyond a single word. I think it is doable by making everything a 1-bit wide bitfield without affecting existing users.