[PATCH v2] powerpc: change rheap functions to use ulongs instead of pointers
Kumar Gala
galak at kernel.crashing.org
Wed Apr 11 05:32:56 EST 2007
On Apr 10, 2007, at 2:09 PM, Timur Tabi wrote:
> Kumar Gala wrote:
>
>> What's the specific problem you are fixing? Its not obvious that
>> this patch is addressing a bug.
>
> problem != bug
>
> The problem is that a pointer implies something you can
> dereference. But the return value from rh_alloc() is only a
> pointer in a specific circumstance which is not actually used in
> any current code. So *all* of the callers of rh_alloc() cast the
> return value to an integer type anyway.
>
> In other words, it's wrong to use a pointer. The value is a
> generic number, and so the type needs to match that. The code is
> just better using ulongs. Also, two redundant macros
> (IS_MURAM_ERR, etc) have been removed and replaced with their
> generic counterpart (IS_ERR_VALUE).
I consider this all code cleanup at this point since the code is
functional at this point. I don't disagree with any of your points,
but this is cleanup. We should take this all the way if we are going
to do it.
- k
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