Linux kernel mirror (for testing) git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git
kernel os linux

scsi: message: fusion: Replace zero-length array with flexible-array member

The current codebase makes use of the zero-length array language extension
to the C90 standard, but the preferred mechanism to declare variable-length
types such as these ones is a flexible array member[1][2], introduced in
C99:

struct foo {
int stuff;
struct boo array[];
};

By making use of the mechanism above, we will get a compiler warning in
case the flexible array does not occur last in the structure, which will
help us prevent some kind of undefined behavior bugs from being
inadvertently introduced[3] to the codebase from now on.

Also, notice that, dynamic memory allocations won't be affected by this
change:

"Flexible array members have incomplete type, and so the sizeof operator
may not be applied. As a quirk of the original implementation of
zero-length arrays, sizeof evaluates to zero."[1]

This issue was found with the help of Coccinelle.

[1] https://gcc.gnu.org/onlinedocs/gcc/Zero-Length.html
[2] https://github.com/KSPP/linux/issues/21
[3] commit 76497732932f ("cxgb3/l2t: Fix undefined behaviour")

Link: https://lore.kernel.org/r/20200319222533.GA20577@embeddedor.com
Signed-off-by: Gustavo A. R. Silva <gustavo@embeddedor.com>
Signed-off-by: Martin K. Petersen <martin.petersen@oracle.com>

authored by

Gustavo A. R. Silva and committed by
Martin K. Petersen
fd6282af 4f93c4bf

+1 -1
+1 -1
drivers/message/fusion/mptsas.h
··· 110 110 MPT_ADAPTER *ioc; 111 111 u32 event; 112 112 u8 retries; 113 - char event_data[0] __aligned(4); 113 + char event_data[] __aligned(4); 114 114 }; 115 115 116 116 struct mptsas_discovery_event {