From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Message-ID: <48F64BD6.6050803@domain.hid> Date: Wed, 15 Oct 2008 22:00:22 +0200 From: Gilles Chanteperdrix MIME-Version: 1.0 References: <48F6195C.7070801@domain.hid> <48F6492C.4090500@domain.hid> In-Reply-To: <48F6492C.4090500@domain.hid> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Subject: Re: [Xenomai-core] rt_task_info.status encoding List-Id: "Xenomai life and development \(bug reports, patches, discussions\)" List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , To: rpm@xenomai.org Cc: Jan Kiszka , xenomai-core Philippe Gerum wrote: > Jan Kiszka wrote: >> Hi, >> >> the documentation refers to the Native Task Status (T_*) when it comes >> to documenting rt_task_info.status. That is not correct. That field >> contains far more flags than T_* is describing and, even worse, comes >> with two collisions: T_PRIMARY and T_JOINABLE are not reported by >> rt_task_inquire, rather T_RELAX (!T_PRIMARY, arrrg...) and T_HELD. >> > > T_PRIMARY is NOT meant to be reported by rt_task_inquire(), and actually, its > value was picked to collide, to reflect the fact that it was a one-way > specifier. You can't use T_RELAX because what is needed is a bit to force a > transition to primary mode using rt_task_set_mode(), which is the actual source > of all uglinesses. Aside of this, the nucleus naturally wants a "relaxed state" > bit, and would not get any help from a "primary mode" bit for threads. > > We could have used a T_RELAX bit to clear in rt_task_set_mode() instead of > T_PRIMARY to set, but unfortunately, such a negative logic would have been > somewhat confusing to users, since what is provided is the secondary -> primary > mode switch. > > Sending back the current mode in rt_task_inquire() would lead to two additional > issues: > 1) if for some reason, we would like to switch the caller to secondary mode at > some point to be able to provide a more complete status, the primary/secondary > status returned would make no sense at all. The fact that we don't do it now > does not preclude the need to do it in future releases. > 2) rt_task_set_mode(..., T_PRIMARY) is already vastly misused in a number of > applications, sometimes uselessly, most of the time in a way that event kills > performances. Giving an interface to get back the current mode would close the > loop, triggering a whole set of new terminally silly usage of that hack. > Applications should NEVER use that feature, it was initially designed for > internal code (i.e. RTDM if my memory serves me well). Actually, the more I > think of it, the more I convinced that I'm going to slaughter this crap in 2.5, > providing an internal syscall from the XENOMAI_SYS class instead for use only in > proper contexts. > > T_JOINABLE might be reported, though, that is a different story. > >> I see two ways out of this: >> >> a) Redirect the documentation to the nucleus thread state flags. >> > > Which means that the documentation of the skin depends on the implementation of > the core. Bad idea. We also have a difficulty: when pdf documentations are generated, the nucleus and native skin documentation end up in different documents. So, we can not redirect the native skin documentation to nucleus. > >> b) Redefine the numerical values of T_PRIMARY and T_JOINABLE (the spare >> bits are unused with the native skin), add missing but possibly >> interesting flags as T_-constants and ensure that T_PRIMARY and >> T_JOINABLE are correctly injected on rt_task_inquire from user >> space. > > Maybe for T_JOINABLE. Gilles? Ok for me. As a side note, I happen to use pthread_set_mode_np to trigger manual mode transitions: I do this before calling the "socket" service to trigger rtnet socket creation in secondary mode, where it can call safely the kernel allocation methods. So, I am not really in favor of removing this service. However, if this usage disappears, and if we fix the issue with mode switches and mutexes, I am Ok with removing the voluntary mode switches, as I agree that they can be misused. -- Gilles.