Re: [PATCH v2 1/2] rust: add abstraction for struct device

From: Danilo Krummrich
Date: Wed Jun 12 2024 - 10:51:57 EST


On 6/11/24 18:13, Boqun Feng wrote:
On Tue, Jun 11, 2024 at 03:29:22PM +0200, Greg KH wrote:
On Tue, Jun 11, 2024 at 03:21:31PM +0200, Danilo Krummrich wrote:
...hence, I agree we should indeed add to the #Invariants and #Safety section
that `->release` must be callable from any thread.

However, this is just theory, do we actually have cases where `device::release`

@Danilo, right, it's only theorical, but it's good to call it out since
it's the requirement for a safe Rust abstraction.

Similar to my previous reply, if we want to call this out as safety requirement
in `Device::from_raw`, we probably want to add it to the documentation of the C
`struct device`, such that we can argue that this is an invariant of C's
`struct device`.

Otherwise we'd have to write something like:

"It must also be ensured that the `->release` function of a `struct device` can
be called from any non-atomic context. While not being officially documented this
is guaranteed by the invariant of `struct device`."


is not allowed to be called from any thread? If so, this would be very confusing
for a reference counted type from a design point of view...

What do you mean exactly "by any thread"? Maybe not from interrupt

The `Send` trait here doesn't really differ between interrupt contexts
and process contexts, so "by any thread", it includes all the contexts.
However, we rely on klint[1] to detect context mismatch in compile time
(it's still a WIP though). For this case, we would need to mark the
`Device::dec_ref` function as might sleep.

Regards,
Boqun

[1]: https://rust-for-linux.com/klint

context, but any other normal thread (i.e. that you can sleep in), it
should be fine to call release() in.

thanks,

greg k-h