Re: [PATCH] Documentation/atomic_t: Clarify signed vs unsigned

From: Boqun Feng
Date: Mon Feb 11 2019 - 19:55:30 EST


On Mon, Feb 11, 2019 at 06:09:43PM +0100, Peter Zijlstra wrote:
>
> Clarify the whole signed vs unsigned issue for atomic_t.
>
> There has been enough confusion on this topic to warrant a few explicit
> words I feel.
>
> Signed-off-by: Peter Zijlstra (Intel) <peterz@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>

FWIW

Acked-by: Boqun Feng <boqun.feng@xxxxxxxxx>

Regards,
Boqun

> ---
> Documentation/atomic_t.txt | 17 +++++++++++++++++
> 1 file changed, 17 insertions(+)
>
> diff --git a/Documentation/atomic_t.txt b/Documentation/atomic_t.txt
> index 913396ac5824..dca3fb0554db 100644
> --- a/Documentation/atomic_t.txt
> +++ b/Documentation/atomic_t.txt
> @@ -56,6 +56,23 @@ The 'full' API consists of (atomic64_ and atomic_long_ prefixes omitted for
> smp_mb__{before,after}_atomic()
>
>
> +TYPES (signed vs unsigned)
> +-----
> +
> +While atomic_t, atomic_long_t and atomic64_t use int, long and s64
> +respectively (for hysterical raisins), the kernel uses -fno-strict-overflow
> +(which implies -fwrapv) and defines signed overflow to behave like
> +2s-complement.
> +
> +Therefore, an explicitly unsigned variant of the atomic ops is strictly
> +unnecessary and we can simply cast, there is no UB.
> +
> +There was a bug in UBSAN prior to GCC-8 that would generate UB warnings for
> +signed types.
> +
> +With this we also conform to the C/C++ _Atomic behaviour and things like
> +P1236R1.
> +
>
> SEMANTICS
> ---------

Attachment: signature.asc
Description: PGP signature