Re: [PATCH v2] rcu: small rcu_dereference doc update

From: Paul E. McKenney
Date: Fri Apr 17 2015 - 11:34:38 EST


On Fri, Apr 17, 2015 at 10:41:30AM -0400, Steven Rostedt wrote:
> On Fri, 17 Apr 2015 16:38:04 +0200
> Milos Vyletel <milos@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> > Make a note stating that repeated calls of rcu_dereference() may not
> > return the same pointer if update happens while in critical section.
> >
> > Reported-by: Jeff Haran <jeff.haran@xxxxxxxxxx>
> > Signed-off-by: Milos Vyletel <milos@xxxxxxxxxx>
>
> Reviewed-by: Steven Rostedt <rostedt@xxxxxxxxxxx>

Queued for 4.2, thank you both!

Thanx, Paul

> -- Steve
>
> > ---
> > Documentation/RCU/whatisRCU.txt | 4 +++-
> > 1 file changed, 3 insertions(+), 1 deletion(-)
> >
> > diff --git a/Documentation/RCU/whatisRCU.txt b/Documentation/RCU/whatisRCU.txt
> > index 88dfce1..16622c9 100644
> > --- a/Documentation/RCU/whatisRCU.txt
> > +++ b/Documentation/RCU/whatisRCU.txt
> > @@ -256,7 +256,9 @@ rcu_dereference()
> > If you are going to be fetching multiple fields from the
> > RCU-protected structure, using the local variable is of
> > course preferred. Repeated rcu_dereference() calls look
> > - ugly and incur unnecessary overhead on Alpha CPUs.
> > + ugly, do not guarantee that the same pointer will be returned
> > + if an update happened while in the critical section, and incur
> > + unnecessary overhead on Alpha CPUs.
> >
> > Note that the value returned by rcu_dereference() is valid
> > only within the enclosing RCU read-side critical section.
>

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