On Mon, Jul 28, 2025 at 4:52 PM Yeoul Na <yeoul...@apple.com> wrote: > > Could someone working on Linux answer my earlier question? Working on a > compromise solution is one thing, but I’m trying to understand the situation > better. > > > Out of curiosity, do you think focusing on simple identifier cases (which, > > as I understand, are the majority in the Linux kernel as well) would allow > > us to make meaningful progress for now? My assumption is that even such > > simple use cases (e.g., __counted_by(field) on a pointer field) are yet to > > be widely adopted across the Linux codebases, but I’d love to hear your > > perspective. >
This is one of Kees's and my goals for the year. (Well, full __counted_by() on pointers in structs, not just single identifiers.) I think GCC recently added support for them, so we could progress somewhat with this. But Kees brought up several examples over different threads about how Linux would theoretically use the feature. They include, but aren't limited to, calling functions (e.g. byte swapping) and using variables outside of the struct. He may have many more examples, but those are two that I recall off the top of my head. -bw
