Re: [PATCH] Introduce buflock, a one-to-many circular buffer mechanism (rev2)

[Henrik Rydberg <rydberg@euromail.se>]

Andrew Morton wrote:
[...]
> I don't understand why this has "lock" in its name.
> 
> The API itself is a mixture of "bufwrite_foo" and "bufread_foo".
> 
> It's all a bit chaotic.  I'd suggest picking a sane name for the whole
> subsytem - perhaps "mrbuf" for "multi reader buffer"?  Then
> consistently name all interface functions as "mrbuf_foo". 
> mrbuf.h, mrbuf_write_lock(), etc.

Point taken.

>> +static __always_inline bool __must_check bufread_retry(struct buflock_reader *br, const struct buflock_writer *bw)
>> +{
>> +	smp_rmb();
>> +	if (unlikely(((br->tail - br->last) & bw->page) < bw->next - br->last))
>> +		return true;
>> +	++br->tail;
>> +	if (unlikely(br->head - br->tail > bw->page))
>> +		br->tail = br->head;
>> +	return false;
>> +}
> 
> This looks too large to be inlined.
> 
> What's the __always_inline for?  Was gcc uninlining this within
> separate compilation units?

As you say, the function is large, and I am uncertain about the rules regarding
compiler reordering across general function calls. Starting a general function
with a memory barrier feels weird. Perhaps the function should be split?

Thanks,
Henrik