Re: extattr_set_*() return type

On Tuesday, December 20, 2011 5:18:58 pm mdf_at_freebsd.org wrote:
> On Tue, Dec 20, 2011 at 1:49 PM, John Baldwin <jhb_at_freebsd.org> wrote:
> > Hmm, if these functions are expected to operate like 'write(2)' and are
> > supposed to return the number of bytes written, shouldn't their return value
> > be 'ssize_t' instead of 'int'?  It looks like the system calls themselves
> > already do the right thing in setting td_retval[] (they assign a ssize_t to it
> > and td_retval[0] can hold a ssize_t on all of our current platforms).  It
> > would seem that the only change would be to the header and probably
> > syscalls.master.  I guess this would require a symver bump to fix though.
> 
> An extended attribute larger than 2GB is a programming abuse, though.
> Technically int may not be 32 bits but it is on all supported
> platforms now.

Today it is an abuse.  In the 90's a 64-bit off_t was considered an abuse by
some. :)

The type should match the documented behavior.  On OS X the set operation
doesn't return a size but instead returns a simple success/failure (0 or -1)
for which an int is appropriate.  However, the FreeBSD API documents that it
operates like write and consumes the buffer.   Note that the size of the
buffer passed to the 'set' and 'get' operations is a size_t, not an int, and
the 'get' operations already return a ssize_t, not an int.

-- 
John Baldwin