On Wed, Jun 18, 2008 at 01:45:13PM -0700, Harvey Harrison wrote:
Fully half of all alsa sparse warnings are from snd_pcm_hw_param_t degrading to integer type, this goes a long way towards eliminating them.
FWIW, *all* this stuff is not bitwise at all. For crying out loud, half of these types are routinely used as array indices and loop variables...
If anything, we want a different set of allowed operations - subtraction between elements of type (yielding integer), addition/subtraction of integer types not bigger than ours (yielding our type), comparisons, assignments (=, +=, -=, passing to function as argument, return from function, initializers) and second/third arguments in ?:. With 0 *not* being allowed as a constant of such type.
It's not bitwise; we may use the same infrastructure in sparse, but it should be a separate class of types (__attribute__((affine))).
dma_addr_t is another candidate for the same treatment, but there we'll need helpers for conversions to hw-acceptable form (dma_to_le32(), etc.) and gradual conversion of drivers.
ALSA ones and pm mess are absolutely straightforward cases, though.