Re: [PATCH tip/core/rcu 04/14] rcu: Add a gcc-style structure initializer for RCU pointers

Josh Triplett
2012-06-15T20:48:30Z

On Fri, Jun 15, 2012 at 01:13:05PM -0700, Paul E. McKenney wrote:
> From: "Paul E. McKenney" <paulmck@linux.vnet.ibm.com>
>
> RCU_INIT_POINTER() returns a value that is never used, and which should
> be abolished due to terminal ugliness:
>
> q = RCU_INIT_POINTER(global_p, p);
>
> However, there are two uses that cannot be handled by a do-while
> formulation because they do gcc-style initialization:
>
> RCU_INIT_POINTER(.real_cred, &init_cred),
> RCU_INIT_POINTER(.cred, &init_cred),
>
> This usage is clever, but not necessarily the nicest approach. This
> commit therefore creates an INIT_RCU_POINTER() macro that is specifically
> designed for gcc-style initialization.

The concept seems fine, but the names seem entirely non-obvious.
RCU_INIT_POINTER versus INIT_RCU_POINTER?

- Josh Triplett