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Date:   Sat, 14 Oct 2023 19:36:52 -0700
From:   Kees Cook <keescook@chromium.org>
To:     Andrew Lunn <andrew@lunn.ch>
Cc:     Justin Stitt <justinstitt@google.com>,
        Heiner Kallweit <hkallweit1@gmail.com>,
        Russell King <linux@armlinux.org.uk>,
        "David S. Miller" <davem@davemloft.net>,
        Eric Dumazet <edumazet@google.com>,
        Jakub Kicinski <kuba@kernel.org>,
        Paolo Abeni <pabeni@redhat.com>, netdev@vger.kernel.org,
        linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, linux-hardening@vger.kernel.org
Subject: Re: [PATCH] net: phy: tja11xx: replace deprecated strncpy with
 ethtool_sprintf
Message-ID: <202310141935.B326C9E@keescook>
References: <20231012-strncpy-drivers-net-phy-nxp-tja11xx-c-v1-1-5ad6c9dff5c4@google.com>
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On Sat, Oct 14, 2023 at 03:55:41AM +0200, Andrew Lunn wrote:
> > I've been told that this whole ethtool API area is considered
> > deprecated. If that holds, then I don't think it's worth adding new
> > helpers to support it when ethtool_sprintf() is sufficient.
> 
> I think deprecated is too strong. The current API is not great, so
> maybe with time a new API will emerge. But given there are around 160
> users of the API, probably over 100 drivers, it will be 20 years or
> more before all that hardware becomes obsolete and the drivers are
> removed.
> 
> > Once you're done with the strncpy->ethtool_sprintf conversions I think
> > it would be nice to have a single patch that fixes all of these
> > "%s"-less instances to use "%s". (Doing per-driver fixes for that case
> > seems just overly painful.)
> 
> I guess it is the same amount of effort to replace them with
> ethtool_puts()?

Yup, right. If adding ethtool_puts() makes sense, then I totally agree.

-- 
Kees Cook