On Tuesday 09 October 2012, Arnd Bergmann wrote: > On Monday 08 October 2012, Jan Kara wrote: > > On Fri 05-10-12 16:55:19, Arnd Bergmann wrote: > > > The follow_link() function always initializes its *p argument, > > > or returns an error, but not all versions of gcc figure this > > > out, so we have to work around this using the uninitialized_var() > > > macro. > > Well, I'm somewhat sceptical to this approach. I agree that bogus > > warnings are not nice but later when the code is changed and possibly real > > use without initialization is added, we won't notice it. Without changing > > anything, we'd at least have a chance of catching it with gcc versions > > which were clever enough to not warn with the original code. Or > > alternatively if we unconditionally initialized the variable that would get > > rid of the warning and made the code more future-proof (that's what I > > usually end up doing)... I don't really care that much about the chosen > > solution, Al is the one to decide. But I wanted to point out there are > > downsides to your solution. > > I'll drop the patch for now and won't send it from my tree then. I agree > that uninitialized_var() is not ideal, but none of the alternatives seemed > better. > > With my latest compiler, I don't actually see the warnings any more, so > maybe someone fixed gcc instead, or this went away after another change. > I'll let you know if it comes back so we can discuss about a better fix then. > Update: I could actually reproduce the problem now, but it only happens when building with 'gcc -s' (i.e. CONFIG_CC_OPTIMIZE_FOR_SIZE). It does happen with both gcc-4.6 and with gcc-4.8, and on both x86-64 and ARM. An alternative patch that would also make it go away is the variant below, but I think that's even worse than the first version I suggested because it makes the binary output slightly worse by adding an unnecessary initialization when building with 'make -s'. Arnd diff --git a/fs/namei.c b/fs/namei.c index aa30d19..c3612a5 100644 --- a/fs/namei.c +++ b/fs/namei.c @@ -810,6 +810,7 @@ follow_link(struct path *link, struct nameidata *nd, void **p) return error; out_put_nd_path: + *p = NULL; path_put(&nd->path); path_put(link); return error; -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-fsdevel" in the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
