On Wed, 2016-09-28 at 14:27 +0300, Cyrill Gorcunov wrote: > On Wed, Sep 28, 2016 at 07:06:26AM -0400, Jamal Hadi Salim wrote: > > > > > > This structure is uapi, so anyone has complete rights to reference > > > @pad in the userspace programs. Sure it would be more clear to remove > > > the @pad completely, but if we choose so I think it's better to do > > > on top instead and then if someone complain we can easily revert > > > the single trivial commit instead of this big patch. > > > > I am conflicted. > > A field labelled "pad" does not appear to be valid as "UAPI". It is > > a cosmetic indicator. If you did sizeof() with or without it being > > present the value doesnt change. > > I think you miss the point what I'm trying to say: currently end-user > may have reference to this member (for any reason) and his program > will compile and run. If we change the name the compilation procedure > fails and this will break API. Yes, referrning @pad is bad idea for > userspace code, and yes (!) better to simply rename it but lets do > that later, on top, so that if we break something in userspace > we could easily revert the oneline change.
Note that some programs could fail to compile with the added union anyway. Some gcc versions are unable to compile a static init with an union struct inet_diag_req_v2 foo = { .pad = 0, sdiag_family = AF_INET, }; When I cooked my recent fq commit I simply removed a pad and replaced it : git show fefa569a9d4bc4 -- include