Re: [PATCH] KVM/VMX: Do not declare vmread_error asmlinkage

From: Sean Christopherson
Date: Wed Aug 17 2022 - 11:58:24 EST


+PeterZ

On Wed, Aug 17, 2022, Uros Bizjak wrote:
> There is no need to declare vmread_error asmlinkage, its arguments
> can be passed via registers for both, 32-bit and 64-bit targets.
> Function argument registers are considered call-clobbered registers,
> they are saved in the trampoline just before the function call and
> restored afterwards.

I'm officially confused. What's the purpose of asmlinkage when used in the kernel?
Is it some historical wart that's no longer truly necessary and only causes pain?

When I wrote this code, I thought that the intent was that it should be applied to
any and all asm => C function calls. But that's obviously not required as there
are multiple instances of asm code calling C functions without annotations of any
kind.

And vmread_error() isn't the only case where asmlinkage appears to be a burden, e.g.
schedule_tail_wrapper() => schedule_tail() seems to exist purely to deal with the
side affect of asmlinkage generating -regparm=0 on 32-bit kernels.