On Sun, Mar 29, 2009 at 2:28 PM, H. Peter Anvin <hpa@xxxxxxxxx> wrote: > Joe Damato wrote: >> Static inline getters/setters have been provided to encourage consumers not to touch the internals of 32bit x86 descriptors directly. >> >> Signed-off-by: Joe Damato <ice799@xxxxxxxxx> > > Okay, what is the motivation for this? > > This is a serious question. The x86 descriptors are so complex that > it's not clear to me that this restriction makes the code any more > clear. Especially not with things like: > > - cpu->arch.gdt[i].b |= 0x00000100; > + desc_set_hi(tmp, desc_get_hi(tmp) | 0x00000100); > > This isn't an improvement. If you're doing to so something like this, > you need to actually implement the *intent* here. Hi - In my first patch set several months ago I replaced the structure desc_struct with bit fields that exposed the fields for IDT/LDT/TSS entries. This patch set was rejected for several reasons, one of which was that Linux is trying to move away from bit fields. I also received other comments such as "take a smaller bite", etc. So instead of the bit fields, I implemented static inline getters/setters. I thought that this small change would be a good first step to re-test the waters of submitting patches to the kernel before I started to clean out more pieces of the x86 architecture specific code. I agree that this isn't very clear, but from comments I received on my first set, I assumed that this was closer to what people wanted to see in the kernel. I am happy to iterate and submit something better, but I am clearly misunderstanding what people would like to see. Any suggestions on how this first-timer can help are greatly appreciated. Joe -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-x86_64" in the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
