There are too many ways for the compiler to optimize (that is, break)
dependencies carried via integer values, so it is now permissible to
carry dependencies only via pointers. This commit catches up some of
the documentation on this point.
Signed-off-by: Paul E. McKenney <paulmck@linux.vnet.ibm.com>
When an RCU-protected pointer is fetched but never dereferenced
rcu_access_pointer() should be used in place of rcu_dereference().
This commit explicitly records this very fact in Documentation/
RCU/rcu_dereference.txt, in order to prevent the usage of
rcu_dereference() in comparisons.
Signed-off-by: Michalis Kokologiannakis <mixaskok@gmail.com>
Signed-off-by: Paul E. McKenney <paulmck@linux.vnet.ibm.com>
This commit provides another caveat for the care and feeding of pointers
returned by rcu_dereference() that was pointed out in discussions within
the C++ standards committee.
Signed-off-by: Paul E. McKenney <paulmck@linux.vnet.ibm.com>
Reviewed-by: Mathieu Desnoyers <mathieu.desnoyers@efficios.com>
Recent LKML discussings (see http://lwn.net/Articles/586838/ and
http://lwn.net/Articles/588300/ for the LWN writeups) brought out
some ways of misusing the return value from rcu_dereference() that
are not necessarily completely intuitive. This commit therefore
documents what can and cannot safely be done with these values.
Signed-off-by: Paul E. McKenney <paulmck@linux.vnet.ibm.com>
Reviewed-by: Josh Triplett <josh@joshtriplett.org>
Paul E. McKenney