On Wed, 23 Jan 2019, Jani Nikula [off-list ref] wrote:

On Wed, 23 Jan 2019, Greg KH [off-list ref] wrote:

quoted

On Wed, Jan 23, 2019 at 03:03:47AM -0800, Kees Cook wrote:

quoted

Variables declared in a switch statement before any case statements
cannot be initialized, so move all instances out of the switches.
After this, future always-initialized stack variables will work
and not throw warnings like this:

fs/fcntl.c: In function ‘send_sigio_to_task’:
fs/fcntl.c:738:13: warning: statement will never be executed [-Wswitch-unreachable]
   siginfo_t si;
             ^~

That's a pain, so this means we can't have any new variables in { }
scope except for at the top of a function?

That's going to be a hard thing to keep from happening over time, as
this is valid C :(

Not all valid C is meant to be used! ;)

Very true.  The other thing to keep in mind is the burden of enforcing a prohibition on a valid C construct like this.  
It seems to me that patch reviewers and maintainers have enough to do without forcing them to watch for variable
declarations in switch statements.  Automating this prohibition, should it be accepted, seems like a good idea to me.

-Edwin Zimmerman