On Tue, Mar 19, 2024 at 12:43:17PM -0700, Jakub Kicinski wrote: > On Sat, 16 Mar 2024 12:44:40 +0300 Dan Carpenter wrote: > > - struct ice_aqc_get_phy_caps_data *pcaps __free(kfree); > > - void *mac_buf __free(kfree); > > + struct ice_aqc_get_phy_caps_data *pcaps __free(kfree) = NULL; > > + void *mac_buf __free(kfree) = NULL; > > This is just trading one kind of bug for another, and the __free() > magic is at a cost of readability. > > I think we should ban the use of __free() in all of networking, > until / unless it cleanly handles the NULL init case.
Free handles the NULL init case, it doesn't handle the uninitialized case. I had previously argued that checkpatch should complain about every __free() pointer if the declaration doesn't have an assignment. The = NULL assignment is unnecessary if the pointer is assigned to something else before the first return, so this might cause "unused assignment" warnings? I don't know if there are any tools which complain about that in that situation. I think probably we should just make that an exception and do the checkpatch thing because it's such a simple rule to implement. regards, dan carpenter
