From: David Woodhouse <dwmw@amazon.co.uk>

Commit 94dfc73e7cf4 ("treewide: uapi: Replace zero-length arrays with
flexible-array members") broke the userspace API for C++.

These structures ending in VLAs are typically a *header*, which can be
followed by an arbitrary number of entries. Userspace typically creates
a larger structure with some non-zero number of entries, for example in
QEMU's kvm_arch_get_supported_msr_feature():

    struct {
        struct kvm_msrs info;
        struct kvm_msr_entry entries[1];
    } msr_data = {};

While that works in C, it fails in C++ with an error like:
 flexible array member 'kvm_msrs::entries' not at end of 'struct msr_data'

Fix this by using __DECLARE_FLEX_ARRAY() for the VLA, which uses [0]
for C++ compilation.

Fixes: 94dfc73e7cf4 ("treewide: uapi: Replace zero-length arrays with flexible-array members")
Signed-off-by: David Woodhouse <dwmw@amazon.co.uk>
---
 arch/x86/include/uapi/asm/kvm.h | 12 ++++++------
 include/uapi/linux/kvm.h        | 11 ++++++-----
 2 files changed, 12 insertions(+), 11 deletions(-)

diff --git a/arch/x86/include/uapi/asm/kvm.h b/arch/x86/include/uapi/asm/kvm.h
index 7ceff6583652..d467e56408ef 100644
--- a/arch/x86/include/uapi/asm/kvm.h
+++ b/arch/x86/include/uapi/asm/kvm.h
@@ -197,13 +197,13 @@ struct kvm_msrs {
 	__u32 nmsrs; /* number of msrs in entries */
 	__u32 pad;
 
-	struct kvm_msr_entry entries[];
+	__DECLARE_FLEX_ARRAY(struct kvm_msr_entry, entries);
 };
 
 /* for KVM_GET_MSR_INDEX_LIST */
 struct kvm_msr_list {
 	__u32 nmsrs; /* number of msrs in entries */
-	__u32 indices[];
+	__DECLARE_FLEX_ARRAY(__u32, indices);
 };
 
 /* Maximum size of any access bitmap in bytes */
@@ -245,7 +245,7 @@ struct kvm_cpuid_entry {
 struct kvm_cpuid {
 	__u32 nent;
 	__u32 padding;
-	struct kvm_cpuid_entry entries[];
+	__DECLARE_FLEX_ARRAY(struct kvm_cpuid_entry, entries);
 };
 
 struct kvm_cpuid_entry2 {
@@ -267,7 +267,7 @@ struct kvm_cpuid_entry2 {
 struct kvm_cpuid2 {
 	__u32 nent;
 	__u32 padding;
-	struct kvm_cpuid_entry2 entries[];
+	__DECLARE_FLEX_ARRAY(struct kvm_cpuid_entry2, entries);
 };
 
 /* for KVM_GET_PIT and KVM_SET_PIT */
@@ -398,7 +398,7 @@ struct kvm_xsave {
 	 * the contents of CPUID leaf 0xD on the host.
 	 */
 	__u32 region[1024];
-	__u32 extra[];
+	__DECLARE_FLEX_ARRAY(__u32, extra);
 };
 
 #define KVM_MAX_XCRS	16
@@ -564,7 +564,7 @@ struct kvm_pmu_event_filter {
 	__u32 fixed_counter_bitmap;
 	__u32 flags;
 	__u32 pad[4];
-	__u64 events[];
+	__DECLARE_FLEX_ARRAY(__u64, events);
 };
 
 #define KVM_PMU_EVENT_ALLOW 0
diff --git a/include/uapi/linux/kvm.h b/include/uapi/linux/kvm.h
index dddb781b0507..3e7b55e5fa1e 100644
--- a/include/uapi/linux/kvm.h
+++ b/include/uapi/linux/kvm.h
@@ -11,6 +11,7 @@
 #include <linux/const.h>
 #include <linux/types.h>
 #include <linux/compiler.h>
+#include <linux/stddef.h>
 #include <linux/ioctl.h>
 #include <asm/kvm.h>
 
@@ -528,7 +529,7 @@ struct kvm_coalesced_mmio {
 
 struct kvm_coalesced_mmio_ring {
 	__u32 first, last;
-	struct kvm_coalesced_mmio coalesced_mmio[];
+	__DECLARE_FLEX_ARRAY(struct kvm_coalesced_mmio, coalesced_mmio);
 };
 
 #define KVM_COALESCED_MMIO_MAX \
@@ -578,7 +579,7 @@ struct kvm_clear_dirty_log {
 /* for KVM_SET_SIGNAL_MASK */
 struct kvm_signal_mask {
 	__u32 len;
-	__u8  sigset[];
+	__DECLARE_FLEX_ARRAY(__u8, sigset);
 };
 
 /* for KVM_TPR_ACCESS_REPORTING */
@@ -1036,7 +1037,7 @@ struct kvm_irq_routing_entry {
 struct kvm_irq_routing {
 	__u32 nr;
 	__u32 flags;
-	struct kvm_irq_routing_entry entries[];
+	__DECLARE_FLEX_ARRAY(struct kvm_irq_routing_entry, entries);
 };
 
 #define KVM_IRQFD_FLAG_DEASSIGN (1 << 0)
@@ -1127,7 +1128,7 @@ struct kvm_dirty_tlb {
 
 struct kvm_reg_list {
 	__u64 n; /* number of regs */
-	__u64 reg[];
+	__DECLARE_FLEX_ARRAY(__u64, reg);
 };
 
 struct kvm_one_reg {
@@ -1579,7 +1580,7 @@ struct kvm_stats_desc {
 	__u16 size;
 	__u32 offset;
 	__u32 bucket_size;
-	char name[];
+	__DECLARE_FLEX_ARRAY(char, name);
 };
 
 #define KVM_GET_STATS_FD  _IO(KVMIO,  0xce)
-- 
2.43.0

On Thu, 05 Mar 2026 20:49:55 +0100, David Woodhouse wrote:
> Commit 94dfc73e7cf4 ("treewide: uapi: Replace zero-length arrays with
> flexible-array members") broke the userspace API for C++.
> 
> These structures ending in VLAs are typically a *header*, which can be
> followed by an arbitrary number of entries. Userspace typically creates
> a larger structure with some non-zero number of entries, for example in
> QEMU's kvm_arch_get_supported_msr_feature():
> 
> [...]

Applied to kvm-x86 fixes, way back on March 12th (i.e. this has been in -next
for several weeks).  Thanks!

[1/1] KVM: x86: Use __DECLARE_FLEX_ARRAY() for UAPI structures with VLAs
      https://github.com/kvm-x86/linux/commit/2619da73bb2f

--
https://github.com/kvm-x86/linux/tree/next