Re: [ANNOUNCE] mdb: Merkey's Linux Kernel Debugger 2.6.27-rc4 released

["Paul E. McKenney" <paulmck@linux.vnet.ibm.com>]

On Thu, Aug 21, 2008 at 09:18:29AM -0700, Linus Torvalds wrote:
> 
> 
> On Thu, 21 Aug 2008, Linus Torvalds wrote:
> > 
> > No, I haven't seen the drafts
> 
> Ok, I have looked at the draft now, and I don't think I was overly 
> pessimistic.
> 
> If I read it right, all the memory ordering operations are defined for 
> _single_ objects. So if you want to do the kernel kind of memory ordering 
> where you specify ordering requirements independently of the actual 
> accesses (perhaps because the accesses are in some helper function that 
> doesn't care, but then you want to "finalize" the thing by stating a 
> sequence point), it seems to be impossible with current drafts.

You are looking for atomic_fence() on page 1168 (1154 virtual) of the
most recent draft.  The current semantics are not correct, but this is
being worked.  And yes, it does currently have a variable associated with
it, but it acts as a bare fence nevertheless.  There is a proposal to
drop the variable.  As you said in a previous email, design by committee.

> Oh, well. Nothing lost. I didn't expect the thing to work.

;-)

							Thanx, Paul