Subject: Re: [PATCH v2] powerpc: change rheap functions to use ulongs instead of pointers

From: Timur Tabi <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 10 Apr 2007 14:09:32 -0500

Kumar Gala wrote:

> What's the specific problem you are fixing?  Its not obvious that this 
> patch is addressing a bug.

problem != bug

The problem is that a pointer implies something you can dereference.  But the return value 
from rh_alloc() is only a pointer in a specific circumstance which is not actually used in 
any current code.  So *all* of the callers of rh_alloc() cast the return value to an 
integer type anyway.

In other words, it's wrong to use a pointer.  The value is a generic number, and so the 
type needs to match that.  The code is just better using ulongs.  Also, two redundant 
macros (IS_MURAM_ERR, etc) have been removed and replaced with their generic counterpart 
(IS_ERR_VALUE).

-- 
Timur Tabi
Linux Kernel Developer @ Freescale