Re: [PATCH -v7][RFC]: mutex: implement adaptive spinning

Harvey Harrison
2009-01-09T21:59:47Z

On Fri, 2009-01-09 at 13:50 -0800, Linus Torvalds wrote:
>
> On Fri, 9 Jan 2009, Harvey Harrison wrote:
> >
> > __needs_inline? That would imply that it's for correctness reasons.
>
> .. but the point is, we have _thousands_ of inlines, and do you know which
> is which? We've historically forced them to be inlined, and every time
> somebody does that "OPTIMIZE_INLINE=y", something simply _breaks_.
>

My suggestion was just an alternative to __force_inline as a naming...I agree that
inline should mean __always_inline.....always.

> So instead of just continually hitting our head against this wall because
> some people seem to be convinced that gcc can do a good job, just do it
> the other way around. Make the new one be "inline_hint" (no underscores
> needed, btw), and there is ansolutely ZERO confusion about what it means.

agreed.

> At that point, everybody knows why it's there, and it's clearly not a
> correctness issue or anything else.
>
> Of course, at that point you might as well argue that the thing should not
> exist at all, and that such a flag should just be removed entirely. Which
> I certainly agree with - I think the only flag we need is "inline", and I
> think it should mean what it damn well says.

Also agreed, but there needs to start being some education about _not_ using
inline so much in the kernel.

Harvey