linux-kernel - Re: Litmus test names

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Message-ID: <159545c3-0093-3cbd-e822-7298ae764966@huaweicloud.com>
Date:   Fri, 7 Apr 2023 15:05:01 +0200
From:   Jonas Oberhauser <jonas.oberhauser@...weicloud.com>
To:     Joel Fernandes <joel@...lfernandes.org>, paulmck@...nel.org
Cc:     Alan Stern <stern@...land.harvard.edu>,
        linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org, Boqun Feng <boqun.feng@...il.com>,
        Jade Alglave <j.alglave@....ac.uk>,
        Luc Maranget <luc.maranget@...ia.fr>,
        Peter Zijlstra <peterz@...radead.org>,
        Will Deacon <will.deacon@....com>,
        Akira Yokosawa <akiyks@...il.com>,
        Andrea Parri <parri.andrea@...il.com>,
        Daniel Lustig <dlustig@...dia.com>,
        David Howells <dhowells@...hat.com>,
        Jonas Oberhauser <jonas.oberhauser@...wei.com>,
        linux-arch@...r.kernel.org, Nicholas Piggin <npiggin@...il.com>,
        Paul Heidekrüger <paul.heidekrueger@...tum.de>,
        Will Deacon <will@...nel.org>
Subject: Re: Litmus test names



On 4/7/2023 2:12 AM, Joel Fernandes wrote:
>
>
>> On Apr 6, 2023, at 6:34 PM, Paul E. McKenney <paulmck@...nel.org> wrote:
>>
>> On Thu, Apr 06, 2023 at 05:36:13PM -0400, Alan Stern wrote:
>>> Paul:
>>>
>>> I just saw that two of the files in tools/memory-model/litmus-tests 
>>> have
>>> almost identical names:
>>>
>>>  Z6.0+pooncelock+pooncelock+pombonce.litmus
>>>  Z6.0+pooncelock+poonceLock+pombonce.litmus
>>>
>>> They differ only by a lower-case 'l' vs. a capital 'L'.  It's not at 
>>> all
>>> easy to see, and won't play well in case-insensitive filesystems.
>>>
>>> Should one of them be renamed?
>>
>> Quite possibly!
>>
>> The "L" denotes smp_mb__after_spinlock().  The only code difference
>> between these is that Z6.0+pooncelock+poonceLock+pombonce.litmus has
>> smp_mb__after_spinlock() and Z6.0+pooncelock+pooncelock+pombonce.litmus
>> does not.
>>
>> Suggestions for a better name?  We could capitalize all the letters
>> in LOCK, I suppose...

I don't think capitalizing LOCK is helpful.

To be honest, almost all the names are extremely cryptic to newcomers 
like me (like, what does Z6.0 mean? Is it some magic incantation?).
And that's not something that's easy to fix.

The only use case I can think of for spending time improving the names 
is that sometimes you wanna say something like "oh, this is like 
Z6.0+pooncelock+pooncelockmb+pombonce". And then people can look up what 
that is.
For that, it's important that the names are easy to disambiguate by 
humans, and I think Joel's suggestion is an improvement.
(and it also fixes the issue brought up by Alan about case-insensitive 
file systems)

>
> Z6.0+pooncelock+pooncelockmb+pombonce.litmus ?
>
> Thanks,
>
>  - Joel
>


have fun, jonas