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

Linus Torvalds
2009-01-09T21:51:48Z

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_.

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.

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.

Linus