• Johannes Berg's avatar
    netlink: make nlmsg_end() and genlmsg_end() void · 053c095a
    Johannes Berg authored
    Contrary to common expectations for an "int" return, these functions
    return only a positive value -- if used correctly they cannot even
    return 0 because the message header will necessarily be in the skb.
    
    This makes the very common pattern of
    
      if (genlmsg_end(...) < 0) { ... }
    
    be a whole bunch of dead code. Many places also simply do
    
      return nlmsg_end(...);
    
    and the caller is expected to deal with it.
    
    This also commonly (at least for me) causes errors, because it is very
    common to write
    
      if (my_function(...))
        /* error condition */
    
    and if my_function() does "return nlmsg_end()" this is of course wrong.
    
    Additionally, there's not a single place in the kernel that actually
    needs the message length returned, and if anyone needs it later then
    it'll be very easy to just use skb->len there.
    
    Remove this, and make the functions void. This removes a bunch of dead
    code as described above. The patch adds lines because I did
    
    -	return nlmsg_end(...);
    +	nlm...
    053c095a
taskstats.c 16.1 KB