Hi, Here are three patches to improve context tracking in sparse. For example, with the patches, one could define spin_lock_irqsave() __acquires(local_irq) __acquires(spinlock) spin_unlock_irqrestore() __releases(local_irq) __releases(spinlock) local_irq_save() __acquires(local_irq) local_irq_restore() __releases(local_irq) spin_lock() __acquires(spinlock) spin_unlock() __releases(spinlock) spin_trylock() __attribute__((conditional_context(spinlock,0,1,0))) and sparse should be able to check constructs like the one in sungem completely: local_irq_save(flags); if (!spin_trylock(&gp->tx_lock)) { /* Tell upper layer to requeue */ local_irq_restore(flags); return ...; } if (..) { spin_unlock_irqrestore(&gp->tx_lock, flags); return ...; } [...] spin_unlock_irqrestore(&gp->tx_lock, flags); I haven't tried this particular case, but I have tried simpler versions of all the primivites used, those are in the test suite. Also, one can now define, as the sparse man page already suggests without patches: /* needs irqs disabled */ void myfunc(void) __attribute__((context(local_irq,1,1))) {...} and sparse will warn when the function is called from a context that doesn't have local_irq. Of course, if the context comes from outside the calling function then the calling function needs to use that attribute as well to indicate that it too needs irqs disabled. Comments welcome! johannes -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-sparse" in the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html