Re: [PATCH] kobject: make sure kobj->ktype is set before kobject_init

Alan Stern
2007-11-29T15:54:35Z

On Thu, 29 Nov 2007, Kay Sievers wrote:

> > And if someone calls kobject_put() after kobject_init() to clean up,
> > their release function will not be called if they didn't set the ktype.
> > So the check really belongs into kobject_init() IMO.

Right. And even though cleaning up no longer needs to drop a reference
to the kset, it still might need to free the kobject's name. So for
example, either of these sequences:

kobject_init(); kobject_set_name();
kobject_set_name(); kobject_init();
... ...
kobject_free(); kobject_free();

would leak memory.

In fact, if we were designing the kobject API from scratch, I'd suggest
making the ktype value an argument to kobject_init() so that it
_couldn't_ be omitted.

> Hmm, will one expect that the whole object will also be free'd when we
> suggest to call kobject_put() to cleanup? That might be pretty
> unexpected, right?

I don't understand the question. People _already_ expect the cleanup
routine to free the kobject when the last reference is dropped. Why
should there be any confusion over this?

Alan Stern