On Thu, 22 Dec 2022 12:46:16 +0100 Andrzej Hajda <andrzej.hajda@xxxxxxxxx> wrote: > Hi all, > > I hope there will be place for such tiny helper in kernel. > Quick cocci analyze shows there is probably few thousands places > where it could be useful. So to clarify, the intent here is a simple readability cleanup for existing open-coded exchange operations. The intent is *not* to identify existing xchg() sites which are unnecessarily atomic and to optimize them by using the non-atomic version. Have you considered the latter? > I am not sure who is good person to review/ack such patches, I can take 'em. > so I've used my intuition to construct to/cc lists, sorry for mistakes. > This is the 2nd approach of the same idea, with comments addressed[0]. > > The helper is tiny and there are advices we can leave without it, so > I want to present few arguments why it would be good to have it: > > 1. Code readability/simplification/number of lines: > > Real example from drivers/net/ethernet/mellanox/mlx5/core/esw/qos.c: > - previous_min_rate = evport->qos.min_rate; > - evport->qos.min_rate = min_rate; > + previous_min_rate = __xchg(evport->qos.min_rate, min_rate); > > For sure the code is more compact, and IMHO more readable. > > 2. Presence of similar helpers in other somehow related languages/libs: > > a) Rust[1]: 'replace' from std::mem module, there is also 'take' > helper (__xchg(&x, 0)), which is the same as private helper in > i915 - fetch_and_zero, see latest patch. > b) C++ [2]: 'exchange' from utility header. > > If the idea is OK there are still 2 qestions to answer: > > 1. Name of the helper, __xchg follows kernel conventions, > but for me Rust names are also OK. I like replace(), or, shockingly, exchange(). But... Can we simply make swap() return the previous value? previous_min_rate = swap(&evport->qos.min_rate, min_rate);
