Re: Kernel 2.4.3 and new aic7xxx

[Jeff Garzik <jgarzik@mandrakesoft.com>]

"Justin T. Gibbs" wrote:
> How often is the list manipulated?  My guess is not very often.

Modified very infrequently...  at boot, and for each hotplug insertion
or removal.  It's not even read very often.


> You can allow people to read the list without taking a spinlock and
> only acquire the spinlock on list manipulations.  Inserting an
> element can be performed atomically so there isn't an SMP issue
> so long as you don't allow more than one processor to insert at
> the same time.  This would allow you to perform insertion sort
> meaning that everything from /proc to device drivers auto-magically
> sees the devices in the order they were probed.

I was just thinking the same thing.  list_splice and an insertion sort
can be used instead of all that allocation crap.


> For hot plug devices
> you might want to insert them at the end to follow the "order probed"
> motif.

hmmm..  Is there a reason why this would be -needed-?  It wouldn't be
hard to implement, but I would rather not have drivers dealing with a
list whose normal state is defined as "mostly sorted"...

-- 
Jeff Garzik       | "You see, in this world there's two kinds of
Building 1024     |  people, my friend: Those with loaded guns
MandrakeSoft      |  and those who dig. You dig."  --Blondie