BIT(), GENMASK(), etc. are useful to define register bits of hardware.
However, low-level code is often written in assembly, where they are
not available due to the hard-coded 1UL, 0UL.
In fact, in-kernel headers such as arch/arm64/include/asm/sysreg.h
use _BITUL() instead of BIT() so that the register bit macros are
available in assembly.
Using macros in include/uapi/linux/const.h have two reasons:
[1] For use in uapi headers
We should use underscore-prefixed variants for user-space.
[2] For use in assembly code
Since _BITUL() uses UL(1) instead of 1UL, it can be used as an
alternative of BIT().
For [2], it is pretty easy to change BIT() etc. for use in assembly.
This allows to replace _BUTUL() in kernel-space headers with BIT().
Link: http://lkml.kernel.org/r/[email protected]
Signed-off-by: Masahiro Yamada <[email protected]>
Cc: Catalin Marinas <[email protected]>
Cc: Christian Borntraeger <[email protected]>
Cc: Heiko Carstens <[email protected]>
Cc: Vasily Gorbik <[email protected]>
Cc: Vineet Gupta <[email protected]>
Cc: Will Deacon <[email protected]>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <[email protected]>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <[email protected]>
Masahiro Yamada