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From:   David Howells <dhowells@redhat.com>
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To:     Andrea Parri <andrea.parri@amarulasolutions.com>
Cc:     dhowells@redhat.com, paulmck@linux.vnet.ibm.com,
        Ingo Molnar <mingo@redhat.com>,
        Peter Zijlstra <peterz@infradead.org>,
        linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org,
        Andrea Parri <parri.andrea@gmail.com>,
        Alan Stern <stern@rowland.harvard.edu>,
        Will Deacon <will.deacon@arm.com>,
        Boqun Feng <boqun.feng@gmail.com>,
        Nicholas Piggin <npiggin@gmail.com>,
        Jade Alglave <j.alglave@ucl.ac.uk>,
        Luc Maranget <luc.maranget@inria.fr>,
        Akira Yokosawa <akiyks@gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [PATCH v2 1/3] locking: Document the semantics of spin_is_locked()
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Date:   Tue, 03 Apr 2018 13:49:09 +0100
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Andrea Parri <andrea.parri@amarulasolutions.com> wrote:

> +/**
> + * spin_is_locked() - Check whether a spinlock is locked.
> + * @lock: Pointer to the spinlock.
> + *
> + * This function is NOT required to provide any memory ordering
> + * guarantees; it could be used for debugging purposes or, when
> + * additional synchronization is needed, accompanied with other
> + * constructs (memory barriers) enforcing the synchronization.
> + *
> + * Return: 1, if @lock is (found to be) locked; 0, otherwise.

It's more complicated than that.  This function is dangerous and should be
used with extreme care.  In the case where CONFIG_SMP=n the value is locked
one way or the other and it might be the wrong way.

David