[ovs-dev] [PATCH] dpif-linux: Fix build with certain 64-bit kernel/userspace combinations.

[Jesse Gross]

On Thu, Oct 13, 2011 at 9:53 AM, Ben Pfaff <blp at nicira.com> wrote:
> Unix 64-bit ABIs have two 64-bit types: "long" and "long long".  Either of
> these is a reasonable choice for uint64_t (the userspace type) and for
> __u64 (the kernel type).  Unfortunately, kernel and userspace don't
> necessarily agree on the choice, and in fact the choice varies across
> kernel versions and architectures.
>
> Now that OVS is actually using kernel types in its kernel header, this
> can make a difference: when __u64 and uint64_t differ, passing a pointer
> to __u64 to OVS function get_unaligned_u64() yields a compiler warning
> or error.
>
> This commit fixes up the problems of this type found in OVS, by avoiding
> calls to get_unaligned_u64() on these types.
>
> I suspect that this problem will recur in the future.  I'm open to
> suggestions on how we can making "uint64_t *" and "__u64 *" always
> incompatible from the viewpoint of sparse.
>
> Reported-by: Pravin Shelar <pshelar at nicira.com>
> ---
> Another solution would be to make get_unaligned_u64() accept both
> types with some kind of macro, like this:
>
> #define get_unaligned_u64(p) \
>        (BUILD_ASSERT(sizeof *(p) == 8), \
>         sizeof (*(p) % 1), \
>         get_unaligned_u64__((const uint64_t *) (p)))

I think you probably could convince sparse to complain by declaring a
type with __attribute__((address_space(XXX))) but it seems like more
mess than it is worth.

I think this can only occur with things that should be using
get_unaligned_u64(), right?  In that case, the macro magic that you
have above seems like a more comprehensive and self contained
solution.  To me, that makes it a pretty significant improvement.