Re: [PATCH] locking/refcount: add sparse annotations to dec-and-lock functions

[Luc Van Oostenryck]

On Mon, Jan 06, 2020 at 04:41:19PM +0100, Peter Zijlstra wrote:
> On Tue, Dec 31, 2019 at 12:38:14AM +0100, Luc Van Oostenryck wrote:

...
 
> Not quite what we're talking about. Instead consider this:
> 
> The normal flow would be something like:
> 
> extern void spin_lock(spinlock_t *lock) __acquires(lock);
> extern void spin_unlock(spinlock_t *lock) __releases(lock);
> 
> extern bool _spin_trylock(spinlock_t *lock) __acquires(lock);
> 
> #define __cond_lock(x, c) ((c) ? ({ __acquire(x); 1; }) : 0)
> #define spin_trylock(lock) __cond_lock(lock, _spin_lock)
> 
> 
> 	if (spin_trylock(lock)) {
> 
> 		/* do crap */
> 
> 		spin_unlock();
> 	}
> 
> 
> So the proposal here:
> 
>   https://markmail.org/message/4obybcgqscznnx63
> 
> would have us write:
> 
> extern bool spin_trylock(spinlock_t *lock) __attribute__((context(lock, 0, spin_trylock(lock));

Well, allowing arbitrary conditions would be hard/impossible but you're
only asking to have the *return value* as condition, right? That looks
as reasonably feasible.

> Basically have sparse do a transform on its own expression tree and
> inject the very same crud we now do manually. This avoids cluttering the
> kernel tree with this nonsense.

So, a call of a function declared with __acquires() or releases() is
interpreted by Sparse as if the call is immediately followed by an
increase or a decrease of the context. It wouldn't be very hard to
add a new attribute (something like __cond_context) and let Sparse do
as if a call to a function with such attribute is directly followed
by a test of its return value and a corresponding change in the context.
It would boil down to:

	extern bool spin_trylock(lock) __cond_context(lock);

	if (spin_trylock(lock)) {
		/* do crap */
		spin_unlock();
	}

behaving like the following code currently would:

	extern bool spin_trylock(lock);

	if (spin_trylock(lock)) {
		__acquire(lock);
		/* do crap */
		spin_unlock();
	}


Would something like this be satisfactory?

-- Luc