Re: [PATCH -tip -v5] irq_work: generic hard-irq context callbacks

[Peter Zijlstra <peterz@infradead.org>]

On Fri, 2010-09-17 at 10:05 +0800, Huang Ying wrote:
> From: Peter Zijlstra <a.p.zijlstra@chello.nl>
> 
> In order for other NMI context users that want to run things from
> hard-IRQ context, extract the perf_event callback mechanism.
> 
> Huang Ying: some fixes

I got complaints about a lacking changelog, how about something like the
below?

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Provide a mechanism that allows running code in IRQ context. It is most
useful for NMI code that needs to interact with the rest of the system
-- like wakeup a task to drain buffers.

Perf currently has such a mechanism, so extract that and provide it as a
generic feature, independent of perf so that others may also benefit.

The IRQ context callback is generated through self-IPIs where possible,
or on architectures like powerpc which have soft-disabled IRQs, its ran
on the soft-enable path.

Architectures that don't have anything like this get to do with a
callback from the timer tick. These architectures can call
irq_run_work() at the tail of any IRQ handlers that might enqueue such
work (like the perf IRQ handler) to avoid undue latencies in processing
the work.

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