Re: [GIT pull] sched/urgent for v6.16-rc7

[Peter Zijlstra <peterz@infradead.org>]

On Sun, Jul 20, 2025 at 11:20:31AM -0700, Linus Torvalds wrote:

> I've obviously pulled this, but considering that the thing isn't
> actually really an unsigned value in the first place, and all users
> seem to cast it to 'long' anyway, there's an obvious question... Why
> is it unsigned in the first place, rather than just make it be the
> more natural signed type?

Histerical raisins AFAIU. I think the original reason to make the thing
unsigned was to get the 2s complement wrapping behaviour.

Yes, these days we have -fwrapv and everybody knows signed types wrap
properly too (although Kees will argue signed should not wrap etc..).
But back then who knows.