On Fri, Sep 09, 2022 at 08:42:25AM +0000, Tian, Kevin wrote: > I think it's quite common to have an alloc() helper initialize refcount, e.g. > vfio_group_alloc() both initialize its user refcount and also call > device_initialize() to gets kref initialized. Similar example in > ib_alloc_device(), etc. Right, it is quite a good/common pattern to have an allocation function return a refcount to the caller. I don't know of any naming standard for this however. Jason