Subject: Re: [PATCH] powerpc: change rheap functions to use long integers instead of pointers

From: Timur Tabi <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 04 Apr 2007 14:20:21 -0500

Dan Malek wrote:

> How about just leaving it alone?  

Panto said a while back that using unsigned long instead of void * is better.

 > A void * is
> perfectly valid as rheap could be used to manage
> any address space. 

And therefore, it shouldn't be a pointer, because that implies that it can be 
dereferenced.  An unsigned long is a better type to use for a generic value than a void 
pointer.

> you are reducing
> it's capability (by taking it's object management
> outside of the kernel virtual space), 

Sorry, I don't understand that.

> and you are
> introducing concerns for error conditions of
> current users.

I'm fixing those by changing the type from long to ulong and using IS_ERR_VALUE().

-- 
Timur Tabi
Linux Kernel Developer @ Freescale