Work for __counted_by on generic pointers in structures (not just flexible array members) has started landing in Clang 19 (current tip of tree). During the development of this feature, a restriction was added to __counted_by to prevent the flexible array member's element type from including a flexible array member itself such as: struct foo { int count; char buf[]; }; struct bar { int count; struct foo data[] __counted_by(count); }; because the size of data cannot be calculated with the standard array size formula: sizeof(struct foo) * count This restriction was downgraded to a warning but due to CONFIG_WERROR, it can still break the build. The application of __counted_by on the ports member of 'struct mxser_board' triggers this restriction, resulting in: drivers/tty/mxser.c:291:2: error: 'counted_by' should not be applied to an array with element of unknown size because 'struct mxser_port' is a struct type with a flexible array member. This will be an error in a future compiler version [-Werror,-Wbounds-safety-counted-by-elt-type-unknown-size] 291 | struct mxser_port ports[] __counted_by(nports); | ^~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 1 error generated. Remove this use of __counted_by to fix the warning/error. However, rather than remove it altogether, leave it commented, as it may be possible to support this in future compiler releases. Cc: stable@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Closes: https://github.com/ClangBuiltLinux/linux/issues/2026 Fixes: f34907ecca71 ("mxser: Annotate struct mxser_board with __counted_by") Signed-off-by: Nathan Chancellor <nathan@xxxxxxxxxx> --- drivers/tty/mxser.c | 2 +- 1 file changed, 1 insertion(+), 1 deletion(-) diff --git a/drivers/tty/mxser.c b/drivers/tty/mxser.c index 458bb1280ebf..5b97e420a95f 100644 --- a/drivers/tty/mxser.c +++ b/drivers/tty/mxser.c @@ -288,7 +288,7 @@ struct mxser_board { enum mxser_must_hwid must_hwid; speed_t max_baud; - struct mxser_port ports[] __counted_by(nports); + struct mxser_port ports[] /* __counted_by(nports) */; }; static DECLARE_BITMAP(mxser_boards, MXSER_BOARDS); --- base-commit: 1613e604df0cd359cf2a7fbd9be7a0bcfacfabd0 change-id: 20240529-drop-counted-by-ports-mxser-board-ed2a66f1a6e2 Best regards, -- Nathan Chancellor <nathan@xxxxxxxxxx>