Re: [RFC v1 0/3] driver-core: add asynch module loading support

[Greg KH <gregkh@linuxfoundation.org>]

On Sun, Aug 31, 2014 at 02:03:17AM -0700, Luis R. Rodriguez wrote:
> From: "Luis R. Rodriguez" <mcgrof@suse.com>
> 
> While reviewing Wu Zhangjin's solution to async probe [0] and his
> ideas on creating async groups I decided to try following the init
> levels on the kernel to try to help with synchronization at least
> on some level. This borrows ideas discussed with the kthread_create()
> solution [1] and also simplifies the idea of how we should be grouping
> async calls between drivers.
> 
> A few things worth mentioning. I decided to go down a generic solution as
> if we ever wanted to bring asynchrnonization behaviour below modules
> this would allow folks to start testing this without much effort. It
> allows asynchronous calls to upkeep the order already set in place
> for built-in code. If one wanted to eventually venture down below
> that path we'd need to add respective exit calls for each level, as
> right now we just assume that every level should use module_exit().
> SmPL grammer could be used to easily tidy this up, for example on
> the subsys_init():
> 
> @ subsys_found @
> expression fn_init;
> declarer name subsys_initcall;
> @@
> 
>   subsys_initcall(fn_init);                                                     
> 
> @ subsys_exit_found depends on subsys_found @
> expression fn_exit;
> declarer name module_exit;
> declarer name subsys_exitcall;
> @@                                                                              
>                                                                                 
> - module_exit(fn_exit);
> + subsys_exitcall(fn_exit);
> 
> And so on. The second thing to note is that when an asynchronous
> call is used we don't want to free the init data as otherwise
> async_run_entry_fn() will run into a missing init routine. SmPL
> could still be used to convert basic __init data out if this is
> needed, however if the init routine also used other init data
> we'd also have to remove the other __init data used. It could
> in theory be possible to do a witch hunt to write this in grammar
> but for now only a simple conversion on the init side is recommended
> as reflected in the SmPL below and manual inspection after that.
> Another option as suggested by Julia to me was to consider an
> __init_asynch which we could reap later. This is of course if
> we go down this generic path.
> 
> @ module_init_found @
> identifier f;
> declarer name module_init;
> declarer name module_init_async;
> @@
> 
> -   module_init(f);
> +   module_init_async(f);
> 
> @ modify_decl depends on module_init_found @
> identifier module_init_found.f;
> @@
> 
> - int f
> + int f
>     (...) { ... }
> 
> 
> @ module_exit_found depends on module_init_found @
> identifier fn_exit;
> declarer name module_exit;
> declarer name module_exit_async;
> @@
> 
> - module_exit(fn_exit);
> + module_exit_async(fn_exit);
> 
> Although not visible the above int f does remove the __init...
> 
> If generalizing an async solution is not desirable in the
> long run for things other than modules than a bool should
> be easy to use to figure if probe should run async'd or not.
> Grouping however still becomes a question then, and this is
> why I went with this approach as it aligns itself more closely
> to the kernel init levels and that should be well tested. In
> theory it could even be possible to use a similar strategy to
> asynch on per init level when built-in using a similar strategy
> but these would have to be separate.

This is a much larger change than I was wanting, I just wanted a change
to 'struct driver' to add a new flag that a driver could then use to say
if it can be async probed or not by the driver core.

Closer to Tejun's patch in this email series, but toggleable on a
per-driver basis, if for no other reason than David's response about
some drivers _having_ to be bound to their device by the time module
init returns.

thanks,

greg k-h