Re: [PATCH for-4.16 2/3] drivers: change struct device_driver::coredump() return type to void

[Arend van Spriel <aspriel@gmail.com>]

On Sat, Mar 24, 2018 at 10:04 AM, Greg Kroah-Hartman
<gregkh@linuxfoundation.org> wrote:
> On Sat, Mar 24, 2018 at 09:50:05AM +0100, Arend van Spriel wrote:
>> On Fri, Mar 23, 2018 at 5:55 PM, Greg Kroah-Hartman
>> <gregkh@linuxfoundation.org> wrote:
>> > On Thu, Mar 15, 2018 at 10:55:24AM +0100, Arend van Spriel wrote:
>> >> Upon submitting a patch for mwifiex [1] it was discussed whether this
>> >> callback function could fail. To keep things simple there is no need
>> >> for the error code so the driver can do the task synchronous or not
>> >> without worries. Currently the device driver core already ignores the
>> >> return value so changing it to void.
>> >>
>> >> [1] https://patchwork.kernel.org/patch/10231933/
>> >>
>> >> Signed-off-by: Arend van Spriel <aspriel@gmail.com>
>> >> ---
>> >>  include/linux/device.h | 5 ++++-
>> >>  1 file changed, 4 insertions(+), 1 deletion(-)
>> >>
>> >> diff --git a/include/linux/device.h b/include/linux/device.h
>> >> index b093405..f08c25b 100644
>> >> --- a/include/linux/device.h
>> >> +++ b/include/linux/device.h
>> >> @@ -256,6 +256,9 @@ enum probe_type {
>> >>   *           automatically.
>> >>   * @pm:              Power management operations of the device which matched
>> >>   *           this driver.
>> >> + * @coredump:        Called when sysfs entry is written to. The device driver
>> >> + *           is expected to call the dev_coredump API resulting in a
>> >> + *           uevent.
>> >>   * @p:               Driver core's private data, no one other than the driver
>> >>   *           core can touch this.
>> >>   *
>> >> @@ -287,7 +290,7 @@ struct device_driver {
>> >>       const struct attribute_group **groups;
>> >>
>> >>       const struct dev_pm_ops *pm;
>> >> -     int (*coredump) (struct device *dev);
>> >> +     void (*coredump) (struct device *dev);
>> >
>> > Isn't this going to cause build warnings now?  Are there no users of
>> > this callback function yet?
>>
>> Hi Greg,
>>
>> I submitted driver patches for the 4.17 kernel and from that
>> discussion we concluded it would be good to change to void return
>> type. So those driver patches were dropped. The caller of the callback
>> in drivers/base/dd.c does not use the return value so from that side
>> there is no issue. So my motivation for asking to consider this for
>> 4.16 is so I can resubmit the driver patches for 4.17 if there is
>> still time before the merge window.
>
> It's too late for 4.16 for this, and I would queue it up in my tree now
> but I don't want to cause any build warnings in linux-next from it.  So
> how about I submit something like this right after 4.17-rc1 is out,
> where the function signature is changed _and_ all definitions of that
> function are changed at the same time to keep everything sane at once?
>
> Can you send me such a patch right before -rc1 is out base on Linus's
> tree?  That should give everyone enough time to get the things merged,
> right?
>
> Or is there no in-flight patches to use this yet, and I can queue it up
> now for -rc1 as no build warnings will happen?

Hi Greg,

Are we good regarding this patch. I have assured there are not
in-flight patches.

Regards,
Arend