We have some rather random rules about when we accept the
"maybe-initialized" warnings, and when we don't.
For example, we consider it unreliable for gcc versions < 4.9, but also
if -O3 is enabled, or if optimizing for size. And then various kernel
config options disabled it, because they know that they trigger that
warning by confusing gcc sufficiently (ie PROFILE_ALL_BRANCHES).
And now gcc-10 seems to be introducing a lot of those warnings too, so
it falls under the same heading as 4.9 did.
At the same time, we have a very straightforward way to _enable_ that
warning when wanted: use "W=2" to enable more warnings.
So stop playing these ad-hoc games, and just disable that warning by
default, with the known and straight-forward "if you want to work on the
extra compiler warnings, use W=123".
Would it be great to have code that is always so obvious that it never
confuses the compiler whether a variable is used initialized or not?
Yes, it would. In a perfect world, the compilers would be smarter, and
our source code would be simpler.
That's currently not the world we live in, though.
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>