Re: [PATCH 6/6] tick/common: optimize cpumask_equal() usage

Thomas Gleixner
2024-05-14T20:48:00Z

On Tue, May 14 2024 at 09:47, Yury Norov wrote:
>> Instead of sprinkling these conditional all over the place, can't you
>> just do the obvious and check for ptr1 == ptr2 in bitmap_copy() and
>> bitmap_equal()?
>
> I proposed this a while (few years) ago, and it has been rejected. On
> bitmaps level we decided not to do that for the reasons memcpy() and
> memcmp() doesn't, and on cpumasks and nodemasks level it hasn't
> been discussed at all.
>
> Now that most of bitmap ops have inline and outline implementation,
> we technically can move this checks in outline code, as inline bitmap
> ops are very lightweight already.
>
> So I see the following options:
> - Implement these sanity checks in outline bitmap API (lib/bitmap.c);
> - Implement them on cpumask and nodemask level; or
> - add a new family of helpers that do this check, like
> bitmap_copy_if_needed() (better name appreciated).
>
> The argument against #1 and #2 these days was that memcpy() and
> similarly bitmap_copy() with dst == src may be a sign of error, and
> we don't want to add a code that optimizes for it.

That's a fair argument.

> Now, I ran the kernel through the LTP test and in practice all the
> cases that I spot look pretty normal. So I can continue sprinkling
> the checks once a few years, or do something like described above.

I don't see these checks as valuable in most cases and I detest them as
they make the code harder to read.

Except for smp_call_function_many_cond() and to a lesser extent
irq_do_set_affinity() none of them you added really matters.

Though it might be worth to have helper functions which make it obvious
that the src == dst case is intentional.

Thanks,

tglx