Re: [PATCH 04/14] memstick: core: fix device_register() error handling

[Greg KH <greg@kroah.com>]

On Wed, Sep 22, 2010 at 10:56:36AM -0500, James Bottomley wrote:
> On Wed, 2010-09-22 at 08:47 -0700, Greg KH wrote:
> > On Wed, Sep 22, 2010 at 12:02:30PM +0200, Boaz Harrosh wrote:
> > > On 09/22/2010 10:53 AM, Kay Sievers wrote:
> > > > On Wed, Sep 22, 2010 at 00:49, Greg KH <greg@kroah.com> wrote:
> > > > 
> > > >>  int device_register(struct device *dev)
> > > >>  {
> > > >> +       int retval;
> > > >> +
> > > >>        device_initialize(dev);
> > > >> -       return device_add(dev);
> > > >> +       retval = device_add(dev);
> > > >> +       if (retval)
> > > >> +               put_device(dev);
> > > >> +       return retval;
> > > >>  }
> > > > 
> > > >> Kay, what am I missing here, why can't we just do this?  Hm, the
> > > >> side-affect might be that if device_register() fails, NO ONE had better
> > > >> touch that device again, as it might have just been freed from the
> > > >> system.  I wonder if that will cause problems...
> > > > 
> > > > That looks right, besides that there might be callers already doing
> > > > this. Which needs to be checked.
> > > > 
> > > > I never liked this pretty useless "convenience API", which just wraps
> > > > two simple functions and the first one can never fail anyway.
> > > > 
> > > > We better remove that device_register() stuff entirely in the long
> > > > run, it's not doing any good. At the kobject level we killed the same
> > > > stuff already long ago.
> > > > 
> > > 
> > > That would be fine, and ping me when you do it, I'll help with my
> > > driver. But don't forget to let us have a way to embed a device inside
> > > a bigger structure.
> > 
> > That's what you should be doing anyway, so it shouldn't be a problem.
> > 
> > > For meanwhile Please check the patch James sent to add_device that cleans
> > > up the allocation of the kobj.name member. (And the comment made there)
> > 
> > See my other email why that isn't a good idea.
> 
> What other email? ... neither you nor Kay replied after either Boaz's
> patch or the corrected one were posted.

See my other email a minute ago in response to this thread.

thanks,

greg k-h