Re: [PATCH] rust: macros: allow non-ASCII characters in `authors`

[Petr Pavlu <petr.pavlu@suse.com>]

On 9/25/26 2:49 PM, Gary Guo wrote:
> On Fri Sep 25, 2026 at 1:36 PM BST, Petr Pavlu wrote:
>> On 9/17/26 9:20 AM, Gary Guo wrote:
>>> On Thu Sep 17, 2026 at 6:11 AM BST, =?UTF-8?q?Thi=C3=A9baud=20Weksteen?= wrote:
>>>> Module authors may have non-ASCII characters in their names. In C,
>>>> `MODULE_AUTHOR` allows arbitrary string literals which are emitted as
>>>> raw UTF-8 bytes into the `.modinfo` section, and multiple in-tree
>>>> modules use non-ASCII author names.
>>>>
>>>> Originally, the single `author` field permitted arbitrary string literals
>>>> including non-ASCII characters. When support for multiple authors was
>>>> introduced in commit 38559da6afb2 ("rust: module: introduce `authors`
>>>> key"), it reused the `expect_string_array` helper that had originally been
>>>> added for module aliases. Because that helper enforced an ASCII check,
>>>> `authors` inadvertently became restricted to ASCII-only string literals.
>>>> Later, when the macro parsing was rewritten to use `syn` in commit
>>>> c578ad703ae9 ("rust: macros: use `syn` to parse `module!` macro"), this
>>>> restriction was carried over by using AsciiLitStr in `authors` type.
>>>>
>>>> Change the element type of `authors` in `ModuleInfo` from `AsciiLitStr`
>>>> to `LitStr` so that UTF-8 author names are permitted.
>>>>
>>>> Fixes: 38559da6afb2 ("rust: module: introduce `authors` key")
>>>> Signed-off-by: Thiébaud Weksteen <tweek@google.com>
>>>
>>> Off topic, but I have a question for modules maintainers...
>>>
>>> Does the `authors` field still serve this purpose today?
>>>
>>> Almost always it is just the initial submitter, while the code has been subject
>>> to many changes (many of them tree wide too), and the maintainers could have
>>> changed as well.
>>>
>>> We have copyright comments on top of files, and git for checking the file
>>> history. What's the point of keeping his inside module metadata?
>>
>> MODULE_AUTHOR() was apparently added in 2.1.18 back in 1996 [1], with
>> a comment that it is for documentation purposes.
> 
> I am pretty sure the kernel changed a lot since then :)

It depends. Copyright lines, changelogs and the MAINTAINERS file were
all present in 1996, yet MODULE_AUTHOR() was still added.

> 
>>
>> I don't have a full picture of how this modinfo field is currently used
>> by module authors, maintainers and users. I think it can be useful as
>> a record of all past and present primary authors of a specific module,
> 
> Well, if they're actually updated... But as pointed out that this was usually
> not the case.
> 
>> and it has also value for external modules.
> 
> The version field has value for external modules too, but that was recently
> removed. I don't think we should care about external modules too much.
> 
>> Unlike copyright statements
>> and Git history, the information is directly visible to users through
>> the modinfo utility.
> 
> Hmm, why does the user want to know who is the primary author of a module?
> Users shouldn't try to contact the authors anyway, they should find the current
> maintainers...
> 
> Even if the field is perfectly up-to-date, a user running an older kernel should
> still not use this field as they need to contact the current mainline maintainer
> if they have issues.
> 
> I just find this info to be hardly useful at all.

It is fairly common for software to list its authors in an About dialog
or in its documentation. This information is typically not used to
determine where to report bugs. One could therefore make the same
argument that such information is not useful. In my view, it simply
gives people credit in a more visible way. I think the module author
field serves a similar documentation purpose.

As mentioned, the author field is optional and individual module
maintainers can decide whether it is useful for their modules. If it
should be removed, I suggest removing the uses of MODULE_AUTHOR() first.

-- 
Regards,
Petr