On Wed, 16 Apr 2025 15:49:40 +0200 Amit Shah amit@kernel.org wrote:
On Sat, 2025-03-22 at 01:29 +0100, Halil Pasic wrote:
As per virtio spec the fields cols and rows are specified as little endian. Although there is no legacy interface requirement that would state that cols and rows need to be handled as native endian when legacy interface is used, unlike for the fields of the adjacent struct virtio_console_control, I decided to err on the side of caution based on some non-conclusive virtio spec repo archaeology and opt for using virtio16_to_cpu() much like for virtio_console_control.event. Strictly by the letter of the spec virtio_le_to_cpu() would have been sufficient. But when the legacy interface is not used, it boils down to the same.
And when using the legacy interface, the device formatting these as little endian when the guest is big endian would surprise me more than it using guest native byte order (which would make it compatible with the current implementation). Nevertheless somebody trying to implement the spec following it to the letter could end up forcing little endian byte order when the legacy interface is in use. So IMHO this ultimately needs a judgement call by the maintainers.
The patch looks fine to me, but can you reword this message to say what you chose and why (and not have the bit about judgment call by maintainers in there)? If it sounds right, it'll be acked and merged. If not, we'll work to ensure it's all good -- so the judgment calls happen on the list, rather than mentioning this way in the commit.
Sorry for the late response! I was vacationing last week.
Would you be so kind to propose a more fortunate wording? My intention was actually to say what did I choose (I choose virtio16_to_cpu() over virtio_le_to_cpu()) and why (if we go strictly by the words of the spec virtio_le_to_cpu() would be right and virtio16_to_cpu() would be wrong, but assumed that we forgot to put the right words into the spec it is the other way around; and MST confirmed that indeed those words need to be added to the spec).
The part on the judgment call is because, for me there is no way to tell if those words are missing from the spec because of intention or because of omission.
Regards, Halil