Re: [PATCH v2] rcu: small rcu_dereference doc update

[Steven Rostedt]

On Fri, 17 Apr 2015 16:38:04 +0200
Milos Vyletel <milos@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> Make a note stating that repeated calls of rcu_dereference() may not
> return the same pointer if update happens while in critical section.
> 
> Reported-by: Jeff Haran <jeff.haran@xxxxxxxxxx>
> Signed-off-by: Milos Vyletel <milos@xxxxxxxxxx>

Reviewed-by: Steven Rostedt <rostedt@xxxxxxxxxxx>

-- Steve

> ---
>  Documentation/RCU/whatisRCU.txt | 4 +++-
>  1 file changed, 3 insertions(+), 1 deletion(-)
> 
> diff --git a/Documentation/RCU/whatisRCU.txt b/Documentation/RCU/whatisRCU.txt
> index 88dfce1..16622c9 100644
> --- a/Documentation/RCU/whatisRCU.txt
> +++ b/Documentation/RCU/whatisRCU.txt
> @@ -256,7 +256,9 @@ rcu_dereference()
>  	If you are going to be fetching multiple fields from the
>  	RCU-protected structure, using the local variable is of
>  	course preferred.  Repeated rcu_dereference() calls look
> -	ugly and incur unnecessary overhead on Alpha CPUs.
> +	ugly, do not guarantee that the same pointer will be returned
> +	if an update happened while in the critical section, and incur
> +	unnecessary overhead on Alpha CPUs.
>  
>  	Note that the value returned by rcu_dereference() is valid
>  	only within the enclosing RCU read-side critical section.

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