const-correctness warnings from gcc -Wwrite-strings?

const-correctness warnings from gcc -Wwrite-strings?

[Chris Peterson]

I am preparing a patch that would fix some const-correctness warnings
when compiling the kernel with gcc -Wwrite-strings. I am not (yet?)
proposing that the kernel Makefile should use -Wwrite-strings.

String constants are not writable, but without -Wwrite-strings, gcc
pretends string constants have type non-const char[] to support lazy
legacy code. :)

Are these fixes of any interest? The only controversy I see is that
some of the changes affect the function signatures of some ops
structures' function pointers.

chris

Re: const-correctness warnings from gcc -Wwrite-strings?

[Valdis.Kletnieks]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 751 bytes --]

On Mon, 04 May 2009 17:00:59 PDT, Chris Peterson said:
> I am preparing a patch that would fix some const-correctness warnings
> when compiling the kernel with gcc -Wwrite-strings. I am not (yet?)
> proposing that the kernel Makefile should use -Wwrite-strings.
> 
> String constants are not writable, but without -Wwrite-strings, gcc
> pretends string constants have type non-const char[] to support lazy
> legacy code. :)

Do you have an estimate of how large/intrusive the patch will end up being?

Tossing in a few 'const' s in function signatures shouldn't be too bad.
A bigger problem will be code that does stuff like:

const char foo[] = "defaultstr";

void bar (char *wumpus)
{
	baz(wumpus?wumpus:foo);
}

which might get more interesting...

[-- Attachment #2: Type: application/pgp-signature, Size: 226 bytes --]