linux-kernel - Re: [PATCH RFD] alternative kobject release wait mechanism

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Message-ID: <20070418113506.06df2d21@gondolin.boeblingen.de.ibm.com>
Date:	Wed, 18 Apr 2007 11:35:06 +0200
From:	Cornelia Huck <cornelia.huck@...ibm.com>
To:	Tejun Heo <htejun@...il.com>
Cc:	linux-kernel <linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org>,
	Alan Stern <stern@...land.harvard.edu>,
	Greg K-H <greg@...ah.com>,
	Rusty Russell <rusty@...tcorp.com.au>,
	dmitry.torokhov@...il.com
Subject: Re: [PATCH RFD] alternative kobject release wait mechanism

On Wed, 18 Apr 2007 17:46:09 +0900,
Tejun Heo <htejun@...il.com> wrote:

> It's debatable but I think things will be safer this way.  If we wait by
> default, we are forced to check that all references are dropped and will
> have a stack dump indicating which object is causing problem when
> something goes wrong, which is better than silent object leaking and/or
> jumping to non-existent address way later.

I agree that oopsing is bad. However, lingering references are not
always coding errors. What if it will just take long for a reference to
be given up? You'd have a hanging device_unregister(), with no
particular gain.

> 
> I personally think all driver interface should be made this way such
> that completion of unregister function guarantees no further access to
> the object or module.  IMHO, it's more intuitive and easier to force
> correctness.

If we really did this, we should also provide a non-waiting alternative.

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