Re: [PATCH v2 1/2] rust: introduce abstractions for fwctlg

["Danilo Krummrich" <dakr@kernel.org>]

On Wed Jan 28, 2026 at 3:59 PM CET, Jason Gunthorpe wrote:
> On Wed, Jan 28, 2026 at 03:01:25PM +0100, Danilo Krummrich wrote:
>> There is no second memory allocation. In the implementation of
>> fwctl::Device::new() above we call _fwctl_alloc_device() with a size (and
>> layout) such that this allocation is suitable to initialize the second argument
>> (i.e. data: impl PinInit<T, Error>) within this allocation.
>
> You are talking about your suggestions now right?

Correct, I'm talking about my proposal.

> Because what I see in Zi's patch doesn't match any of this?
>
> +                bindings::_fwctl_alloc_device(
> +                    parent.as_raw(),
> +                    ops,
> +                    core::mem::size_of::<bindings::fwctl_device>(),
> +                )
>
> That is not allocating any memory for driver use ...

Yes, the patch doesn't do any of that.

> What you are explaining sounds good to me, though I don't quite get
> the PinInit<> flow but I trust you on that. :)

So, it would basically look like this:

	pub struct Device<T> {
	    dev: Opaque<bindings::fwctl_device>,
	    data: T,
	}

Where T is the type of the driver specific fwctl device data.

	impl<T> Device<T> {
	    pub fn new(
	        parent: &device::Device,
	        data: impl PinInit<T::Data, Error>
	    ) -> Result<ARef<Self>> {
	        let layout = Kmalloc::aligned_layout(Layout::new::<Self>());

	        // SAFETY: ...
	        let raw_fwctl: *mut Self = unsafe {
	            bindings::_fwctl_alloc_device(
	                parent.as_raw(),
	                &Self::VTABLE,
	                layout.size(),
	            )
	        }
	        .cast();
	        let raw_fwctl = NonNull::new(from_err_ptr(raw_fwctl)?).ok_or(ENOMEM)?;

	        // Get the pointer to `Self::data`.
	        let raw_data = unsafe { &raw mut (*raw_fwctl.as_ptr().data) };

	        // Initialize the `data` initializer within the memory pointed
	        // to by `raw_data`.
	        unsafe { data.__pinned_init(raw_data) }.inspect_err(|_| {
	            // Find the `struct fwctl_device` pointer from the `Self`
	            // pointer.
	            let fwctl_dev = unsafe { Self::into_fwcl_device(raw_fwctl) };

	            // Since we failed to execute the initializer of `data`,
	            // unwind, i.e. drop our reference to `fwctl_dev`.
	            unsafe { bindings::fwctl_put(fwctl_dev) };
	        })?;


	        // The initializer was successful, hence return `Self` as
	        // `ARef<Self>`.
	        Ok(unsafe { ARef::from_raw(raw_fwctl) })
	    }
	}

So, essentially the driver passes an initializer of its private data and we
"write" this initializer into the extra memory allocated with
_fwctl_alloc_device().