On 04/26/2012 08:57 AM, Eric Blake wrote:
On 04/26/2012 12:56 AM, Laine Stump wrote:
The ATTRIBUTE_NONNULL(m) macro normally resolves to the gcc builtin __attribute__((__nonnull__(m))). The effect of this in gcc is unfortunately only to make gcc believe that "m" can never possibly be NULL, *not* to add in any checks to guarantee that it isn't ever NULL (i.e. it is an optimization aid, *not* something to verify code correctness.) - see the following gcc bug report for more details:
http://gcc.gnu.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=17308
Static source analyzers such as clang and coverity apparently can use ATTRIBUTE_NONNULL(), though, to detect dead code (in the case that the arg really is guaranteed non-NULL), as well as situations where an obviously NULL arg is given to the function.
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=815270 is a good example of a bug caused by erroneous application of ATTRIBUTE_NONNULL(). Several people spent a long time staring at this code and not finding the problem, because the problem wasn't in the function itself, but in the prototype that specified ATTRIBUTE_NONNULL() for an arg that actually *wasn't* always non-NULL, and caused a segv when dereferenced (even though the code that dereferenced the pointer was inside an if() that checked for a NULL pointer, that code was optimized out by gcc).
There may be some very small gain to be had from the optimizations that can be inferred from ATTRIBUTE_NONNULL(), but it seems safer to err on the side of generating code that behaves as expected, while turning on the attribute for static analyzers.
(dissenting opinions welcome :-) None from me :)
Since nobody said they thought it was a bad idea, I've pushed it.