Re: [patch 2.6.29-rc7 regulator-next] regulator: refcount fixes

[Mark Brown <broonie@sirena.org.uk>]

On Wed, Mar 11, 2009 at 04:43:34PM -0800, David Brownell wrote:

> Buggy consumers could notice different bug symptoms.  The main
> example would be refcounting bugs; also, any (out-of-tree) users
> of the experimental regulator_set_optimum_mode() stuff which
> don't call it when they're done using a regulator.

I'm OK with this from a code point of view so

Acked-by: Mark Brown <broonie@opensource.wolfsonmicro.com>

However any consumers that take advantage of this won't be able to
safely share a regulator without extra work since they have no way of
telling why a regulator is in the state that it's in without extra
stuff.  We should probably have something along the lines of a
regulator_get_exclusive() for them.  Previously the consumer counting
would have stopped them interfering with enables done by other
consumers.

There will be other consumers that can't safely share a regulator anyway
(eg, requiring additional code to notice and handle voltage changes) so
it'd be a good thing to have.