Re: fix for strict-alias warnings

"Andrew Dunstan" <andrew(at)dunslane(dot)net> writes:
> Of course, the linux kernel is aimed at a limited set of compilers - as I
> understand it basically gcc although it has been made to build with Intel
> compilers - which makes things somewhat easier for them. What is our target
> set of compilers? What is our target version of C?

"Pretty much anything that speaks ANSI C" is my usual feeling about
that. As yet we have not heard of any non-gcc compilers in which this
is a problem, although you have a point that some compiler somewhere may
do this and not have a way to turn it off :-(

> Also note that uninhibited casting between types can still cause alignment
> problems,

We understand that issue, we solved it years ago.

BTW, I haven't looked at the problem spots in detail. How many of them
are due to the use of MemSet in conjunction with other access to a chunk
of memory? ISTM that we need not worry about code motion around a
MemSet call, since that would require the compiler to prove that the
memset() path through the macro wouldn't be affected, which I doubt it
would think.

regards, tom lane