* Paul E. McKenney <paulmck@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > From: Will Deacon <will.deacon@xxxxxxx> > > lockless_dereference is a nice idea, but its gained little traction in > kernel code since it's introduction three years ago. This is partly s/its/it s/it's/its > because it's a pain to type, but also because using READ_ONCE instead > will work correctly on all architectures apart from Alpha, which is a > fully supported but somewhat niche architecture these days. > > This patch moves smp_read_barrier_depends() (a NOP on all architectures > other than Alpha) from lockless_dereference into READ_ONCE, converts > the few actual users over to READ_ONCE and then finally removes > lockless_dereference altogether. Nit: if we refer to smp_read_barrier_depends() with parentheses (which is the nice thing to do for function-alike symbols), then we should do the same with READ_ONCE() and lockless_dereference() as well. Also, could we please split this into three patches: #1: Add smp_read_barrier_depends() to READ_ONCE() #2: Convert all lockless_dereference() users to READ_ONCE() #3: Remove the now unused lockless_dereference() API to make it easier to analyze if bisected to, should any problems arise? Thanks, Ingo
