From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S936400AbXGSBie (ORCPT ); Wed, 18 Jul 2007 21:38:34 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S934314AbXGSBiR (ORCPT ); Wed, 18 Jul 2007 21:38:17 -0400 Received: from smtp2.linux-foundation.org ([207.189.120.14]:55975 "EHLO smtp2.linux-foundation.org" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S934215AbXGSBiP (ORCPT ); Wed, 18 Jul 2007 21:38:15 -0400 Date: Wed, 18 Jul 2007 18:37:53 -0700 (PDT) From: Linus Torvalds To: Jeff Garzik cc: Andrew Morton , LKML , ak@suse.de, adaplas@gmail.com, linux-fbdev-devel@lists.sourceforge.net, benh@kernel.crashing.org Subject: Re: [git patches] two warning fixes In-Reply-To: <20070718235504.GA9601@havoc.gtf.org> Message-ID: References: <20070718235504.GA9601@havoc.gtf.org> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=us-ascii Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org On Wed, 18 Jul 2007, Jeff Garzik wrote: > > Please pull from 'warnings' branch of > master.kernel.org:/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/jgarzik/misc-2.6.git warnings > > to receive the following updates: Quite frankly, I think a *lot* better fix for warnings would be to remove those damn broken "must_check" things on functions that don't at all need checking! I'm pretty fed up with random "must_check" and "deprecated". They have never *ever* helped anybody, afaik. There are some very few functions that really do need to have their error returns checked (because not checking it is a security issue), but people seem to think "must_check" is a good approximation of "I think most of the time it makes sense to check". So let's make a new rule: We absolutely NEVER add things like "must_check" unless not checking causes a real and obvious SECURITY ISSUE. And we absolutely *never* add crap like "deprecated", where the only point of the warning is to effectively hide *real* problems. So realistically, the only thing that needs must_check is pretty much things like "get_user()" and quite frankly, I'm not sure even about that one. Ok? Linus