Re: [RFC PATCH 1/2] iio: core: implement iio_{claim|release}_direct_mode()

Jonathan Cameron
2016-03-09T20:23:40Z

On 09/03/16 20:06, Alison Schofield wrote:
> On Sat, Mar 05, 2016 at 06:02:36PM +0000, Jonathan Cameron wrote:
>> On 02/03/16 13:28, Lars-Peter Clausen wrote:
>>> On 03/01/2016 08:02 PM, Alison Schofield wrote:
>>>> It is often the case that the driver wants to be sure a device stays
>>>> in direct mode while it is executing a task or series of tasks. To
>>>> accomplish this today, the driver performs this sequence: 1) take the
>>>> device state lock, 2)verify it is not in a buffered mode, 3) execute
>>>> some tasks, and 4) release that lock.
>>>>
>>>> This patch introduces a pair of helper functions that simplify these
>>>> steps and make it more semantically expressive.
>>>>
>>>> iio_claim_direct_mode()
>>>> If the device is not in any buffered mode it is guaranteed
>>>> to stay that way until iio_release_direct_mode() is called.
>>>>
>>>> iio_release_direct_mode()
>>>> Release the claim. Device is no longer guaranteed to stay
>>>> in direct mode.
>>>>
>>>> Signed-off-by: Alison Schofield <amsfield22@gmail.com>
>>>
>>> Looks basically good.
>> Agreed - nothing to add from me to what Lars has covered here.
>> Nice to 'hide' the accesses to mlock as well as will cut out the desire
>> to 'abuse it'. Amusingly we only just 'fixed' the docs to to say this
>> element of iio_dev was usable by drivers. Once we have these new functions
>> in use throughout the tree, we will want to flip that back again to internal
>> only.
>>
>> Jonathan
>>
> Thanks for the review (& Lars too)
>
> Thinking about your note about flipping the mlock field back to
> INTERNAL (from DRIVER), this change, even when it's applied to
> all relevant instances, doesn't get us all the way there.
>
> While these claim/release functions will remove direct access to mlock
> where a driver wants to hold direct mode, the drivers are grabbing
> mlock for other reasons also. (too many reasons/instances for me to
> quickly understand or summarize)
>
> I'm willing to look at it further and comment if that's helpful.
It would certainly be interesting to evaluate this. I suspect that most
are either in some obscure way connected to the mode or are 'misusing'
the lock for more general purposes where a driver specific lock would make
more sense.

Jonathan
>
> alisons
>
>
>
>
>
> --
> To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-iio" in
> the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org
> More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
>