Re: [PATCH 05/13] drm: provide device-refcount

[David Herrmann]

Hi

On Wed, Feb 12, 2014 at 5:40 PM, Greg KH <gregkh@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> On Wed, Feb 12, 2014 at 05:26:57PM +0100, Daniel Vetter wrote:
>> On Wed, Feb 12, 2014 at 3:44 PM, David Herrmann <dh.herrmann@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>> >>> +/**
>> >>> + * drm_dev_ref - Take reference of a DRM device
>> >>> + * @dev: device to take reference of or NULL
>> >>> + *
>> >>> + * This increases the ref-count of @dev by one. You *must* already own a
>> >>> + * reference when calling this. Use drm_dev_unref() to drop this reference
>> >>> + * again.
>> >>> + *
>> >>> + * This function never fails. However, this function does not provide *any*
>> >>> + * guarantee whether the device is alive or running. It only provides a
>> >>> + * reference to the object and the memory associated with it.
>> >>> + */
>> >>> +void drm_dev_ref(struct drm_device *dev)
>> >>> +{
>> >>> +     if (dev)
>> >>
>> >> This check here (and below in the unref code) look funny. What's the
>> >> reason for it? Trying to grab/drop a ref on a NULL pointer sounds like a
>> >> pretty serious bug to me. This is in contrast to kfree(NULL) which imo
>> >> makes sense - freeing nothing is a legitimate operation imo.
>> >
>> > I added it mainly to simplify cleanup-code paths. You can then just
>> > call unref() and set it to NULL regardless whether you actually hold a
>> > reference or not. For ref() I don't really care but I think the
>> > NULL-test doesn't hurt either.
>> >
>> > I copied this behavior from get_device() and put_device(), btw.
>> > Similar to these functions, I think a lot more will go wrong if the
>> > NULL pointer is not intentional. Imo, ref-counting on a NULL object
>> > just means "no object", so it shouldn't do anything.
>>
>> My fear with this kind of magic is that someone accidentally exchanges
>> the pointer clearing to NULL (or assignement when grabbing a ref) with
>> the unref/ref call and then we have a very subtle bug at hand. If we
>> don't accept NULL objects the failure will be much more obvious.
>>
>> The entire kernel kobject stuff is very consistent about this, but I
>> couldn't find a reason for it - all the NULL checks predate git
>> history. Greg can you please shed some lights on best practice here
>> and whether my fears are justified given your experience with shoddy
>> drivers in general?
>
> Yes, the driver core does test for NULL here, as sometimes you are
> passing in a "parent" pointer, and don't really care if it is NULL or
> not, so just treating it as if you really do have a reference is usually
> fine.
>
> But, for a subsystem where you "know" you will not be doing anything as
> foolish as that, I'd not allow that :)
>
> So I'd recommend taking those checks out of the drm code.

Ok, for _ref() I'm fine dropping it, but for _unref() I really don't
understand the concerns. I like to follow the principle of making
teardown-functions work with partially initialized objects. A caller
shouldn't be required to reverse all it's setup functions if one last
step of object-initialization fails. It's much easier if they can just
call the destructor which figures itself out which parts are
initialized. Obviously, this isn't always possible, but checking for
NULL in _unref() or _put() paths simplifies this a lot and avoids
non-sense if(obj) unref(obj);

For instance for drm_minor objects we only initialize the minors that
are enabled by the specific driver. However, it's enough to test for
the flags during device-initialization. device-registration,
-deregistration and -teardown just call _free/unref on all possible
minors. Allowing NULL avoids testing for these flags in every path but
the initialization.

Anyhow, shared code -> many opinions, so if people agree on dropping
it, I will do so.

Thanks
David
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