Re: [PATCH v3 03/12] locking/ww_mutex: Extract stamp comparison to __ww_mutex_stamp_after

[Nicolai HÃhnle]

On 22.12.2016 02:58, zhoucm1 wrote:
> On 2016å12æ22æ 02:46, Nicolai HÃhnle wrote:
> > +static inline bool __sched
> > +__ww_ctx_stamp_after(struct ww_acquire_ctx *a, struct ww_acquire_ctx *b)
> > +{
> > +    return a->stamp - b->stamp <= LONG_MAX &&
> > +           (a->stamp != b->stamp || a > b);
> I want to ask a stupid question, why a can compare with b? They are
> pointers of structure. Isn't stamp enough for compare?

As far as I understand, the idea is to provide a tie-breaker to ensure 
that there is a strict order between contexts even if the stamp happens 
to be equal. Since we get stamps from atomic increments, this really 
only matters if (a) someone makes a mistake and confuses ww_classes 
(which CONFIG_DEBUG_MUTEXES would flag) or (b) the ww_class stamp 
counter wraps around fully during the lifetime of the acquire context. 
This is extremely unlikely of course.

Nicolai