Paul,
I'd like to implement a static array of pointers with rcu.
(Note that Documentation/RCU/arrayRCU.txt addresses only the case of
static arrays where the data (rather than a pointer to the data) is
located in each array element).
The array is implemented today in kvm as follows:
struct kvm_io_bus {
int dev_count;
#define NR_IOBUS_DEVS 6
struct kvm_io_device *devs[NR_IOBUS_DEVS];
};
It's easy to use rcu_assign_pointer and
rcu_dereference to access each value in the array,
so that's fine.
However, I also have the dev_count value to handle.
This value is usually used in loops like this
for (i = 0; i < bus->dev_count; ++i) {
... uses bus->devs[i] ...
}
I can assign the dev_count value with rcu_assign_pointer and even though
it is not a pointer I think it should work fine. However, to access
dev_count I think that rcu_dereference will not do what I want:
#define rcu_dereference(p) ({ \
typeof(p) _________p1 = ACCESS_ONCE(p);
\
smp_read_barrier_depends(); \
(_________p1); \
})
The use of dev_count is not through a dependency so
smp_read_barrier_depends will not be enough on most architectures.
So it seems that what I really need is something like:
#define rcu_read_value(p) ({ \
typeof(p) _________p1 = ACCESS_ONCE(p);
\
smp_rmb(); \
(_________p1); \
})
And maybe
#define rcu_assign_value rcu_assign_pointer
for symmetry.
Comments?
--
MST
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