[pacman-dev] Clang warnings

[Olivier Brunel]

On Fri, 1 Jan 2016 23:03:22 +1000
Allan McRae <allan at archlinux.org> wrote:

> On 01/01/16 22:01, Olivier Brunel wrote:
> > On Thu, 31 Dec 2015 14:32:45 +0100
> > Rikard Falkeborn <rikard.falkeborn at gmail.com> wrote:
> >   
> >> There are some warnings recently introduced when compiling with
> >> Clang (with --enable-warningflags) for x86_64. The warnings are
> >> related to casting of specific alpm_event-types to alpm_event_t
> >> where the required alignment differs between the types. On x86, it
> >> shouldn't be a problem, but maybe there are other architectures
> >> pacman should work on where this is a real issue?
> >> Either way, I think it would be good if pacman built cleanly with
> >> Clang. Any suggestions on how to fix this?  
> > 
> > I think the only way is not to use a specific event type but the
> > generic one, to ensure the size is correct. I don't have clang so I
> > didn't test this, but I think there are two ways to solve this.
> > 
> > Basically the issue is when using code such as:
> > 
> > alpm_event_hook_run_t event;
> > event.type = ALPM_EVENT_HOOK_RUN_START;
> > event.name = name;
> > event.desc = desc;
> > EVENT(handle, &event);
> > 
> > So we could either use the alpm_event_t and always go into the right
> > union member, e.g:
> > 
> > alpm_event_t event;
> > event.hook_run.type = ALPM_EVENT_HOOK_RUN_START;
> > event.hook_run.name = name;
> > event.hook_run.desc = desc;
> > EVENT(handle, &event);
> >   
> 
> I'd prefer this way but...
> 
> What is different with these events than all the others? Why do the
> old ones not give warnings? We should be consistent here. I have a
> feeling we have had this conversation before...
> 
> Allan

I picked hook_run as an example, but it might affect older ones as
well. The point is that alpm_event_t and alpm_event_hook_run_t differ
in size. Now since the former is a union of all the specific events, it
can hold them all, but when creating/using only a specific one, it
might be of a different size.
(Or maybe this is the first one to grow over the generic event?)

As for having had this conversation before, I'm not sure, but there
probaly have been a similar one in the other way around: how to use the
generic event to get specific values, e.g. in pacman callback handler:
typecast, of through the union.

For the record, though sometimes we just go through the union (e.g.
event->scriptlet_info.line) most times (or, whenever more than one or
two values are needed, or used more than once) we just use a
specific pointer, e.g: alpm_event_hook_run_t *e = &event->hook_run;

-j