[PATCH v3 01/12] lib/kasan: introduce CONFIG_ARCH_DEFER_KASAN option

[Andrew Morton]

On Thu, 17 Jul 2025 19:27:21 +0500 Sabyrzhan Tasbolatov <snovitoll at gmail.com> wrote:

> Introduce CONFIG_ARCH_DEFER_KASAN to identify architectures that need
> to defer KASAN initialization until shadow memory is properly set up.
> 
> Some architectures (like PowerPC with radix MMU) need to set up their
> shadow memory mappings before KASAN can be safely enabled, while others
> (like s390, x86, arm) can enable KASAN much earlier or even from the
> beginning.
> 
> This option allows us to:
> 1. Use static keys only where needed (avoiding overhead)
> 2. Use compile-time constants for arch that don't need runtime checks
> 3. Maintain optimal performance for both scenarios
> 
> Architectures that need deferred KASAN should select this option.
> Architectures that can enable KASAN early will get compile-time
> optimizations instead of runtime checks.

Looks nice and appears quite mature.  I'm reluctant to add it to mm.git
during -rc6, especially given the lack of formal review and ack tags.

But but but, that's what the mm-new branch is for.  I guess I'll add it
to get some additional exposure, but whether I'll advance it into
mm-unstable/linux-next for this cycle is unclear.

What do you (and others) think?