One problem of grab_file() is that it cannot distinguish the following
two cases:
- It cannot read the file (the file does not exist, or read permission
is not set)
- It can read the file, but the file size is zero
This is because grab_file() calls mmap(), which requires the mapped
length is greater than 0. Hence, grab_file() fails for both cases.
If an empty header file were included for checksum calculation, the
following warning would be printed:
WARNING: modpost: could not open ...: Invalid argument
An empty file is a valid source file, so it should not fail.
Use read_text_file() instead. It can read a zero-length file.
Then, parse_file() will succeed with doing nothing.
Going forward, the first case (it cannot read the file) is a fatal
error. If the source file from which an object was compiled is missing,
something went wrong.