Re: [PATCH] netlink: make nlmsg_end() and genlmsg_end() void
From: David Miller <davem@davemloft.net>
Date: 2015-01-18 06:04:50
From: Johannes Berg <johannes@sipsolutions.net> Date: Fri, 16 Jan 2015 22:09:00 +0100 ...
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 <redacted>
I like this, applied, thanks Johannes. You know, I would even be willing to apply a patch adjusting that phonet case. So feel free to submit that.