On Jun 11, 2019, at 2:48 PM, Andrew Morton [off-list ref] wrote:

On Wed, 12 Jun 2019 01:08:36 +0530 Shyam Saini [off-list ref] wrote:

quoted

Currently, there are 3 different macros, namely sizeof_field, SIZEOF_FIELD
and FIELD_SIZEOF which are used to calculate the size of a member of
structure, so to bring uniformity in entire kernel source tree lets use
FIELD_SIZEOF and replace all occurrences of other two macros with this.

For this purpose, redefine FIELD_SIZEOF in include/linux/stddef.h and
tools/testing/selftests/bpf/bpf_util.h and remove its defination from
include/linux/kernel.h

In favour of FIELD_SIZEOF, this patch also deprecates other two similar
macros sizeof_field and SIZEOF_FIELD.

For code compatibility reason, retain sizeof_field macro as a wrapper macro
to FIELD_SIZEOF

As Alexey has pointed out, C structs and unions don't have fields -
they have members.  So this is an opportunity to switch everything to
a new member_sizeof().

What do people think of that and how does this impact the patch footprint?

I did a check, and FIELD_SIZEOF() is used about 350x, while sizeof_field()
is about 30x, and SIZEOF_FIELD() is only about 5x.

That said, I'm much more in favour of "sizeof_field()" or "sizeof_member()"
than FIELD_SIZEOF().  Not only does that better match "offsetof()", with
which it is closely related, but is also closer to the original "sizeof()".

Since this is a rather trivial change, it can be split into a number of
patches to get approval/landing via subsystem maintainers, and there is no
huge urgency to remove the original macros until the users are gone.  It
would make sense to remove SIZEOF_FIELD() and sizeof_field() quickly so
they don't gain more users, and the remaining FIELD_SIZEOF() users can be
whittled away as the patches come through the maintainer trees.

Cheers, Andreas