Re: [PATCH 1/3] 24-bit types: typedef and macros for accessing 3-byte arrays as integers

["Chris Leech" <christopher.leech@intel.com>]

On Wed, Sep 10, 2008 at 9:11 AM, Boaz Harrosh <bharrosh@panasas.com> wrote:
> Chris you might want to change the definitions at linux/types.h
> to:
>
> typedef struct { __u8 b[3]; } __be24, __le24 __packed;
>
> With gcc it will not help with the proceeding fields, and the
> containing struct will need it's own "__packed" declaration
> but it will keep it packed with previous fields.

I haven't seen padding added simply because of a nested structure
boundary, but I'm not up on all the ABIs for the different
architectures.  Obviously a containing structure would want to have
the 24-bit type adjacent to an 8-bit type, or have it's own packed
attribute if needed.

It shouldn't hurt, in this case the members shouldn't be expected to
have more than byte alignment anyway, but I can't see how it would
help.

If there's a particular arch that might be a problem I'm happy to look
into it, but I don't want to start throwing packed attributes around
just in case.

Chris