Re: [PATCH v4 1/5] lib/bitmap: add bitmap_{set,get}_value()

[Yury Norov]

On Sat, Jul 22, 2023 at 06:57:26PM -0700, Yury Norov wrote:
> On Thu, Jul 20, 2023 at 07:39:52PM +0200, Alexander Potapenko wrote:
> > +/**
> > + * bitmap_write - write n-bit value within a memory region
> > + * @map: address to the bitmap memory region
> > + * @value: value of nbits
> > + * @start: bit offset of the n-bit value
> > + * @nbits: size of value in bits, up to BITS_PER_LONG
> > + */
> > +static inline void bitmap_write(unsigned long *map,
> > +				unsigned long value,
> > +				unsigned long start, unsigned long nbits)
> > +{
> > +	size_t index = BIT_WORD(start);
> > +	unsigned long offset = start % BITS_PER_LONG;
> > +	unsigned long space = BITS_PER_LONG - offset;
> > +
> > +	if (unlikely(!nbits))
> > +		return;
> > +	value &= GENMASK(nbits - 1, 0);
> 
> Strictly speaking, a 'value' shouldn't contain set bits beyond nbits
> because otherwise it's an out-of-bonds type of error.
> 
> This is kind of gray zone to me, because it's a caller's responsibility
> to provide correct input. But on the other hand, it would be a great
> headache debugging corrupted bitmaps.
> 
> Now that we've got a single user of the bitmap_write, and even more,
> it's wrapped with a helper, I think it would be reasonable to trim a
> 'value' in the helper, if needed.
> 
> Anyways, the comment must warn about that loudly...

OK. I spent a night with that, and I'm still not sure. Pseudo code
that implements it looks like this:

        for (bit = 0; bit < nbits; bit++)
                assign_bit(start + bit, bitmap, val & BIT(bit));

And it ignores trailing bits. So if we're optimizing this pattern,
we'd ignore these bits just as well...

Either way, whatever we decide, let's stay clear with our intentions
and mention explicitly that tail bits are either must be zero, or
ignored.

Alexander, can you add the snippet above to the comments for the
bitmap_write() and bitmap_read(), as well as in the test? Also, if we
decide to clear tail of the input value, would BITMAP_LAST_WORD_MASK()
generate better code than GENMASK(nbits - 1, 0) does?

Commets are very appreciated.

Thanks,
Yury