linux/include
Johannes Berg 053c095a82 netlink: make nlmsg_end() and genlmsg_end() void
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(...);
+	nlmsg_end(...);
+	return 0;

I could have preserved all the function's return values by returning
skb->len, but instead I've audited all the places calling the affected
functions and found that none cared. A few places actually compared
the return value with <= 0 in dump functionality, but that could just
be changed to < 0 with no change in behaviour, so I opted for the more
efficient version.

One instance of the error I've made numerous times now is also present
in net/phonet/pn_netlink.c in the route_dumpit() function - it didn't
check for <0 or <=0 and thus broke out of the loop every single time.
I've preserved this since it will (I think) have caused the messages to
userspace to be formatted differently with just a single message for
every SKB returned to userspace. It's possible that this isn't needed
for the tools that actually use this, but I don't even know what they
are so couldn't test that changing this behaviour would be acceptable.

Signed-off-by: Johannes Berg <johannes.berg@intel.com>
Signed-off-by: David S. Miller <davem@davemloft.net>
2015-01-18 01:03:45 -05:00
..
acpi ACPI / processor: Convert apic_id to phys_id to make it arch agnostic 2015-01-05 23:32:42 +01:00
asm-generic mm: mmu_gather: use tlb->end != 0 only for TLB invalidation 2015-01-13 15:20:40 +13:00
clocksource time: move the timecounter/cyclecounter code into its own file. 2014-12-30 18:29:25 -05:00
crypto
drm Revert "drm/gem: Warn on illegal use of the dumb buffer interface v2" 2014-12-24 13:13:22 +10:00
dt-bindings GMAC: define clock ID used for GMAC 2014-12-31 19:14:18 -05:00
keys
kvm arm/arm64: KVM: Require in-kernel vgic for the arch timers 2014-12-15 11:50:42 +01:00
linux net: replace br_fdb_external_learn_* calls with switchdev notifier events 2015-01-18 00:23:57 -05:00
math-emu
media
memory
misc
net netlink: make nlmsg_end() and genlmsg_end() void 2015-01-18 01:03:45 -05:00
pcmcia
ras
rdma IB/core: Implement support for MMU notifiers regarding on demand paging regions 2014-12-15 18:13:36 -08:00
rxrpc
scsi SCSI for-linus on 20141220 2014-12-20 13:42:57 -08:00
soc
sound ALSA: pcm: Fix kerneldoc for params_*() functions 2014-12-30 16:41:11 +01:00
target target: Drop left-over fabric_max_sectors attribute 2015-01-09 15:22:05 -08:00
trace net: rename vlan_tx_* helpers since "tx" is misleading there 2015-01-13 17:51:08 -05:00
uapi tc: add BPF based action 2015-01-17 23:51:10 -05:00
video
xen Merge git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/davem/net 2015-01-15 00:53:17 -05:00
Kbuild