Hi Vincent, On Mon, 3 Feb 2025 at 14:37, Vincent Mailhol <mailhol.vincent@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > On 03/02/2025 at 16:44, Johannes Berg wrote: > > On Sun, 2025-02-02 at 12:53 -0500, Yury Norov wrote: > >>> Instead of creating another variant for > >>> non-constant bitfields, wouldn't it be better to make the existing macro > >>> accept both? > >> > >> Yes, it would definitely be better IMO. > > > > On the flip side, there have been discussions in the past (though I > > think not all, if any, on the list(s)) about the argument order. Since > > the value is typically not a constant, requiring the mask to be a > > constant has ensured that the argument order isn't as easily mixed up as > > otherwise. > > If this is a concern, then it can be checked with: > > BUILD_BUG_ON_MSG(!__builtin_constant_p(_mask) && > __builtin_constant_p(_val), > _pfx "mask is not constant"); > > It means that we forbid FIELD_PREP(non_const_mask, const_val) but allow > any other combination. Even that case looks valid to me. Actually there is already such a user in drivers/iio/temperature/mlx90614.c: ret |= field_prep(chip_info->fir_config_mask, MLX90614_CONST_FIR); So if you want enhanced safety, having both the safer/const upper-case variants and the less-safe/non-const lower-case variants makes sense. Gr{oetje,eeting}s, Geert -- Geert Uytterhoeven -- There's lots of Linux beyond ia32 -- geert@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx In personal conversations with technical people, I call myself a hacker. But when I'm talking to journalists I just say "programmer" or something like that. -- Linus Torvalds