Re: [PATCH] do not export kernel's NULL #define to userspace

From: Arnd Bergmann
Date: Wed Mar 21 2012 - 09:32:32 EST


On Wednesday 21 March 2012, Lubos Lunak wrote:
> GCC's NULL is actually __null, which allows detecting some questionable
> NULL usage and warn about it. Moreover each platform/compiler should have
> its own stddef.h anyway (which is different from linux/stddef.h).
> So there's no good reason to leak kernel's NULL to userspace and
> override what the compiler provides.
>
> Signed-off-by: LuboÅ LuÅÃk <l.lunak@xxxxxxx>

Yes, this looks like a bug, but I'm not sure that the solution is
sufficient. Have you checked the other exported header files
for whether they use NULL after including linux/stddef.h?

If so, we might have to replace it with a __KERNEL_NULL constant
or something, like we do for the stuff in linux/types.h, so we
don't accidentally break user applications that rely on the
header files to be self-contained.

I think there is at least a NULL usage in linux/wireless.h and some
netfilter headers.

Arnd
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