Re: [PATCH] nohz: Change tick_dep_mask from 'unsigned long' to 'unsigned int'

From	Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
Newsgroups	linux.kernel
Subject	Re: [PATCH] nohz: Change tick_dep_mask from 'unsigned long' to 'unsigned int'
Date	2016-03-15 18:40 +0100
Message-ID	<rd16P-5aD-19@gated-at.bofh.it> (permalink)
References	(1 earlier) <rcNdw-49L-5@gated-at.bofh.it> <rcTVD-ip-1@gated-at.bofh.it> <rcW78-1Xi-11@gated-at.bofh.it> <rd0aK-4xG-21@gated-at.bofh.it> <rd0X8-566-13@gated-at.bofh.it>
Organization	linux.* mail to news gateway

Show all headers | View raw

On Tue, Mar 15, 2016 at 10:28 AM, Frederic Weisbecker
<fweisbec@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> And wouldn't it be so nice if "thread_info->flags" would just be
>> atomic_t too. Right now we use a mixture of bit-ops and ACCESS_ONCE()
>> (and many codepaths then doing neither, and just accessing it
>> directly, ignoring any races.
>>
>> Oh well.
>
> I can try that too while at it :-)

The real problem with thread_info->flags is that it's
per-architecture, and people access that thing from assembly code.

So changing that is potentially really *very* painful. The patch
itself is not likely too bad, but having confidence that everything
was caught?

Nasty. It would probably be a very good cleanup, but I'm not sure how
worthwhile it is considering the pain.

(The only good news is that any problem is likely to be *very*
obvious. Switching the field to a 32-bit type on a big-endian machine
and not catching some case will mean that people will check or modify
the wrong flags, and you'd likely get breakage quite quickly)

                 Linus

Back to linux.kernel | Previous | Next — Previous in thread | Find similar | Unroll thread

Thread

[GIT PULL] NOHZ updates for v4.6 Ingo Molnar <mingo@kernel.org> - 2016-03-14 13:40 +0100
  Re: [GIT PULL] NOHZ updates for v4.6 Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org> - 2016-03-15 03:50 +0100
    Re: [GIT PULL] NOHZ updates for v4.6 Peter Zijlstra <peterz@infradead.org> - 2016-03-15 09:50 +0100
      Re: [GIT PULL] NOHZ updates for v4.6 Ingo Molnar <mingo@kernel.org> - 2016-03-15 10:50 +0100
    [PATCH] atomic: Fix bugs in 'fetch_or()' and rename it to 'xchg_or()' Ingo Molnar <mingo@kernel.org> - 2016-03-15 10:40 +0100
      Re: [PATCH] atomic: Fix bugs in 'fetch_or()' and rename it to  'xchg_or()' Peter Zijlstra <peterz@infradead.org> - 2016-03-15 12:00 +0100
        Re: [PATCH] atomic: Fix bugs in 'fetch_or()' and rename it to  'xchg_or()' Ingo Molnar <mingo@kernel.org> - 2016-03-15 13:10 +0100
          Re: [PATCH] atomic: Fix bugs in 'fetch_or()' and rename it to  'xchg_or()' Peter Zijlstra <peterz@infradead.org> - 2016-03-15 13:50 +0100
      Re: [PATCH] atomic: Fix bugs in 'fetch_or()' and rename it to  'xchg_or()' Peter Zijlstra <peterz@infradead.org> - 2016-03-15 12:10 +0100
      Re: [PATCH] atomic: Fix bugs in 'fetch_or()' and rename it to  'xchg_or()' Ingo Molnar <mingo@kernel.org> - 2016-03-15 13:10 +0100
        Re: [PATCH] atomic: Fix bugs in 'fetch_or()' and rename it to  'xchg_or()' Ingo Molnar <mingo@kernel.org> - 2016-03-15 13:40 +0100
          Re: [PATCH] atomic: Fix bugs in 'fetch_or()' and rename it to  'xchg_or()' Ingo Molnar <mingo@kernel.org> - 2016-03-15 13:40 +0100
          Re: [PATCH] atomic: Fix bugs in 'fetch_or()' and rename it to  'xchg_or()' Peter Zijlstra <peterz@infradead.org> - 2016-03-15 14:20 +0100
      Re: [PATCH] atomic: Fix bugs in 'fetch_or()' and rename it to  'xchg_or()' Peter Zijlstra <peterz@infradead.org> - 2016-03-15 13:30 +0100
      [PATCH v2] atomic: Fix bugs in 'fetch_or()' and rename it to  'xchg_or()' Ingo Molnar <mingo@kernel.org> - 2016-03-15 13:30 +0100
        Re: [PATCH v2] atomic: Fix bugs in 'fetch_or()' and rename it to  'xchg_or()' Peter Zijlstra <peterz@infradead.org> - 2016-03-15 14:30 +0100
          Re: [PATCH v2] atomic: Fix bugs in 'fetch_or()' and rename it to  'xchg_or()' Ingo Molnar <mingo@kernel.org> - 2016-03-16 09:10 +0100
            Re: [PATCH v2] atomic: Fix bugs in 'fetch_or()' and rename it to  'xchg_or()' Peter Zijlstra <peterz@infradead.org> - 2016-03-16 09:40 +0100
        Re: [PATCH v2] atomic: Fix bugs in 'fetch_or()' and rename it to  'xchg_or()' Frederic Weisbecker <fweisbec@gmail.com> - 2016-03-15 18:10 +0100
          Re: [PATCH v2] atomic: Fix bugs in 'fetch_or()' and rename it to  'xchg_or()' Ingo Molnar <mingo@kernel.org> - 2016-03-16 09:20 +0100
            Re: [PATCH v2] atomic: Fix bugs in 'fetch_or()' and rename it to  'xchg_or()' Frederic Weisbecker <fweisbec@gmail.com> - 2016-03-17 02:00 +0100
      Re: [PATCH] atomic: Fix bugs in 'fetch_or()' and rename it to 'xchg_or()' Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org> - 2016-03-15 17:20 +0100
    [PATCH] nohz: Change tick_dep_mask from 'unsigned long' to 'unsigned  int' Ingo Molnar <mingo@kernel.org> - 2016-03-15 11:00 +0100
      Re: [PATCH] nohz: Change tick_dep_mask from 'unsigned long' to  'unsigned int' Ingo Molnar <mingo@kernel.org> - 2016-03-15 13:20 +0100
        Re: [PATCH] nohz: Change tick_dep_mask from 'unsigned long' to  'unsigned int' Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org> - 2016-03-15 17:40 +0100
          Re: [PATCH] nohz: Change tick_dep_mask from 'unsigned long' to  'unsigned int' Frederic Weisbecker <fweisbec@gmail.com> - 2016-03-15 18:30 +0100
            Re: [PATCH] nohz: Change tick_dep_mask from 'unsigned long' to  'unsigned int' Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org> - 2016-03-15 18:40 +0100

csiph-web