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authorSalah Triki <salah.triki@gmail.com>2026-09-17 14:00:52 +0100
committerJonathan Cameron <jonathan.cameron@oss.qualcomm.com>2026-09-30 18:59:55 +0100
commite8dd273d199f5bbe295a8e3d8b777c5505b6b2e1 (patch)
tree767c7e109d3e6b9ec6549e99dfec9085d01318ad /Documentation/process/programming-language.rst
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iio: proximity: isl29501: Fix return type of isl29501_register_writegrafted
isl29501_register_write() was returning a u32 instead of an int. Since the function returns negative error codes (such as -ERANGE or return values from i2c_smbus_write_byte_data()), returning an unsigned integer type prevents callers from correctly checking for negative error conditions. Fix this by changing the function return type from u32 to int. This was found through manual code review. Fixes: 1c28799257bc ("iio: light: isl29501: Add support for the ISL29501 ToF sensor.") Signed-off-by: Salah Triki <salah.triki@gmail.com> Reviewed-by: Joshua Crofts <joshua.crofts1@gmail.com> Cc: stable@vger.kernel.org Signed-off-by: Jonathan Cameron <jonathan.cameron@oss.qualcomm.com>
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+.. _programming_language:
+
+Programming Language
+====================
+
+The Linux kernel is written in the C programming language [c-language]_.
+More precisely, it is typically compiled with ``gcc`` [gcc]_
+under ``-std=gnu11`` [gcc-c-dialect-options]_: the GNU dialect of ISO C11.
+``clang`` [clang]_ is also supported; see documentation on
+:ref:`Building Linux with Clang/LLVM <kbuild_llvm>`.
+
+This dialect contains many extensions to the language [gnu-extensions]_,
+and many of them are used within the kernel as a matter of course.
+
+Attributes
+----------
+
+One of the common extensions used throughout the kernel are attributes
+[gcc-attribute-syntax]_. Attributes allow to introduce
+implementation-defined semantics to language entities (like variables,
+functions or types) without having to make significant syntactic changes
+to the language (e.g. adding a new keyword) [n2049]_.
+
+In some cases, attributes are optional (i.e. a compiler not supporting them
+should still produce proper code, even if it is slower or does not perform
+as many compile-time checks/diagnostics).
+
+The kernel defines pseudo-keywords (e.g. ``__pure``) instead of using
+directly the GNU attribute syntax (e.g. ``__attribute__((__pure__))``)
+in order to feature detect which ones can be used and/or to shorten the code.
+
+Please refer to ``include/linux/compiler_attributes.h`` for more information.
+
+Rust
+----
+
+The kernel has support for the Rust programming language
+[rust-language]_ under ``CONFIG_RUST``. It is compiled with ``rustc`` [rustc]_
+under ``--edition=2021`` [rust-editions]_. Editions are a way to introduce
+small changes to the language that are not backwards compatible.
+
+On top of that, some unstable features [rust-unstable-features]_ are used in
+the kernel. Unstable features may change in the future, thus it is an important
+goal to reach a point where only stable features are used.
+
+Please refer to Documentation/rust/index.rst for more information.
+
+.. [c-language] http://www.open-std.org/jtc1/sc22/wg14/www/standards
+.. [gcc] https://gcc.gnu.org
+.. [clang] https://clang.llvm.org
+.. [gcc-c-dialect-options] https://gcc.gnu.org/onlinedocs/gcc/C-Dialect-Options.html
+.. [gnu-extensions] https://gcc.gnu.org/onlinedocs/gcc/C-Extensions.html
+.. [gcc-attribute-syntax] https://gcc.gnu.org/onlinedocs/gcc/Attribute-Syntax.html
+.. [n2049] http://www.open-std.org/jtc1/sc22/wg14/www/docs/n2049.pdf
+.. [rust-language] https://www.rust-lang.org
+.. [rustc] https://doc.rust-lang.org/rustc/
+.. [rust-editions] https://doc.rust-lang.org/edition-guide/editions/
+.. [rust-unstable-features] https://github.com/Rust-for-Linux/linux/issues/2