Re: [PATCH v2 00/10] Split i2c_lock_adapter into i2c_lock_root and i2c_lock_segment

[Wolfram Sang]

On Wed, Jun 20, 2018 at 07:17:53AM +0200, Peter Rosin wrote:
> Hi!
> 
> With the introduction of mux-locked I2C muxes, the concept of
> locking only a segment of the I2C adapter tree was added. At the
> time, I did not want to cause a lot of extra churn, so left most
> users of i2c_lock_adapter alone and apparently didn't think enough
> about it; they simply continued to lock the whole adapter tree.
> However, i2c_lock_adapter is in fact wrong for almost every caller
> (there is naturally an exception) that is itself not a driver for
> a root adapter. What normal drivers generally want is to only
> lock the segment of the adapter tree that their device sits on.
> 
> In fact, if a device sits behind a mux-locked I2C mux, and its
> driver calls i2c_lock_adapter followed by an unlocked I2C transfer,
> things will deadlock (since even a mux-locked I2C adapter will lock
> its parent at some point). If the device is not sitting behind a
> mux-locked I2C mux (i.e. either directly on the root adapter or
> behind a (chain of) parent-locked I2C muxes) the root/segment
> distinction is of no consequence; the root adapter is locked either
> way.
> 
> Mux-locked I2C muxes are probably not that common, and putting any
> of the affected devices behind one is probably even rarer, which
> is why we have not seen any deadlocks. At least not that I know
> of...
> 
> Since silently changing the semantics of i2c_lock_adapter might
> be quite a surprise, especially for out-of-tree users, this series
> instead removes the function and forces all users to explicitly
> name I2C_LOCK_SEGMENT or I2C_LOCK_ROOT_ADAPTER in a call to
> i2c_lock_bus, as suggested by Wolfram. Yes, users will be a teensy
> bit more wordy, but open-coding I2C locking from random drivers
> should be avoided, so it's perhaps a good thing if it doesn't look
> too neat?
> 
> I suggest that Wolfram takes this series through the I2C tree and
> creates an immutable branch for the other subsystems. The series
> is based on v4.18-r1.

Applied to a seperate branch named "i2c/precise-locking-names" which I
will merge into for-next, so it will get proper testing already. Once we
get the missing acks from media, MFD, and IIO maintainers, I will merge
it into for-4.19.

Thank you, Peter!