Re: [PATCH] net: consolidate lock/unlock into unlock_wait

From: Nicholas Mc Guire
Date: Sat Mar 19 2016 - 04:31:31 EST


On Fri, Mar 18, 2016 at 03:35:18PM -0700, Joe Perches wrote:
> On Fri, 2016-03-18 at 17:37 -0400, David Miller wrote:
> > From: Nicholas Mc Guire <hofrat@xxxxxxxxx>
> > > The spin_lock()/spin_unlock() is synchronizing on the adapter->work_lock
> > > as the comment also suggests, which is equivalent to spin_unlock_wait()
> > > but the later should be more efficient.
> []
> > There really is no justification for this change.
> > This is an optimization in a slow-path of the driver.
> > The device is a rarely used older piece of hardware.
>
> It really might be nice to take some of the ancient
> hardware drivers in drivers/net and move them into
> some separate subdirectory like:
>
> drivers/net/ancient
> or
> drivers/net/antiques
> or
> drivers/net/archaic
> etc...
>
> so there's some clear designation that these crufty
> old drivers don't need to be touched anymore except
> for maybe when kernel wide changes occur.
>
actually thats just the problem - some of those did not
perform such kernel wide changes lock/unlock -> unlock_wait
being one of them. But having a distinction as proposed to
keep people like me from scanning them, sounds like a good idea.

Will add an "age of code" check before submitting API cleanups.

thx!
hofrat