linux-kernel - Re: [PATCH] tools/memory-model: document the "one-time init" pattern

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Date:   Mon, 27 Jul 2020 12:31:49 -0400
From:   Alan Stern <stern@...land.harvard.edu>
To:     Matthew Wilcox <willy@...radead.org>
Cc:     Eric Biggers <ebiggers@...nel.org>, linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org,
        linux-arch@...r.kernel.org,
        "Paul E . McKenney" <paulmck@...nel.org>,
        linux-fsdevel@...r.kernel.org, Akira Yokosawa <akiyks@...il.com>,
        Andrea Parri <parri.andrea@...il.com>,
        Boqun Feng <boqun.feng@...il.com>,
        Daniel Lustig <dlustig@...dia.com>,
        "Darrick J . Wong" <darrick.wong@...cle.com>,
        Dave Chinner <david@...morbit.com>,
        David Howells <dhowells@...hat.com>,
        Jade Alglave <j.alglave@....ac.uk>,
        Luc Maranget <luc.maranget@...ia.fr>,
        Nicholas Piggin <npiggin@...il.com>,
        Peter Zijlstra <peterz@...radead.org>,
        Will Deacon <will@...nel.org>
Subject: Re: [PATCH] tools/memory-model: document the "one-time init" pattern

On Mon, Jul 27, 2020 at 04:28:27PM +0100, Matthew Wilcox wrote:
> On Mon, Jul 27, 2020 at 11:17:46AM -0400, Alan Stern wrote:
> > Given a type "T", an object x of type pointer-to-T, and a function
> > "func" that takes various arguments and returns a pointer-to-T, the
> > accepted API for calling func once would be to create once_func() as
> > follows:
> > 
> > T *once_func(T **ppt, args...)
> > {
> > 	static DEFINE_MUTEX(mut);
> > 	T *p;
> > 
> > 	p = smp_load_acquire(ppt);	/* Mild optimization */
> > 	if (p)
> > 		return p;
> > 
> > 	mutex_lock(mut);
> > 	p = smp_load_acquire(ppt);
> > 	if (!p) {
> > 		p = func(args...);
> > 		if (!IS_ERR_OR_NULL(p))
> > 			smp_store_release(ppt, p);
> > 	}
> > 	mutex_unlock(mut);
> > 	return p;
> > }
> > 
> > Users then would have to call once_func(&x, args...) and check the
> > result.  Different x objects would constitute different "once"
> > domains.
> [...]
> > In fact, the only drawback I can think of is that because this relies
> > on a single mutex for all the different possible x's, it might lead to
> > locking conflicts (if func had to call once_func() recursively, for
> > example).  In most reasonable situations such conflicts would not
> > arise.
> 
> Another drawback for this approach relative to my get_foo() approach
> upthread is that, because we don't have compiler support, there's no
> enforcement that accesses to 'x' go through once_func().  My approach
> wraps accesses in a deliberately-opaque struct so you have to write
> some really ugly code to get at the raw value, and it's just easier to
> call get_foo().

Something like that could be included in once_func too.  It's relatively 
tangential to the main point I was making, which was to settle on an 
overall API and discuss how it should be described in recipes.txt.

Alan Stern