Date: Fri, 31 Aug 2012 12:13:21 -0700
From: Josh Triplett <josh@joshtriplett.org>
To: "Paul E. McKenney" <paulmck@linux.vnet.ibm.com>
Cc: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, mingo@elte.hu, laijs@cn.fujitsu.com,
        dipankar@in.ibm.com, akpm@linux-foundation.org,
        mathieu.desnoyers@polymtl.ca, niv@us.ibm.com, tglx@linutronix.de,
        peterz@infradead.org, rostedt@goodmis.org, Valdis.Kletnieks@vt.edu,
        dhowells@redhat.com, eric.dumazet@gmail.com, darren@dvhart.com,
        fweisbec@gmail.com, sbw@mit.edu, patches@linaro.org
Subject: Re: [PATCH tip/core/rcu 02/26] rcu: New rcu_user_enter_irq() and
 rcu_user_exit_irq() APIs
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On Thu, Aug 30, 2012 at 02:05:19PM -0700, Paul E. McKenney wrote:
> From: Frederic Weisbecker <fweisbec@gmail.com>
> 
> In some cases, it is necessary to enter or exit userspace-RCU-idle mode
> from an interrupt handler, for example, if some other CPU sends this
> CPU a resched IPI.  In this case, the current CPU would enter the IPI
> handler in userspace-RCU-idle mode, but would need to exit the IPI handler
> after having exited that mode.
> 
> To allow this to work, this commit adds two new APIs to TREE_RCU:
> 
> - rcu_user_enter_irq(). This must be called from an interrupt between
> rcu_irq_enter() and rcu_irq_exit().  After the irq calls rcu_irq_exit(),
> the irq handler will return into an RCU extended quiescent state.
> In theory, this interrupt is never a nested interrupt, but in practice
> it might interrupt softirq, which looks to RCU like a nested interrupt.
> 
> - rcu_user_exit_irq(). This must be called from a non-nesting
> interrupt, interrupting an RCU extended quiescent state, also
> between rcu_irq_enter() and rcu_irq_exit(). After the irq calls
> rcu_irq_exit(), the irq handler will return in an RCU non-quiescent
> state.

These names seem a bit confusing.  From the descriptions, it sounds like
you don't always need to pair them; rcu_irq_exit() will return to a
non-quiescent state, unless you call rcu_user_enter_irq and *don't* call
rcu_user_exit_irq.  Did I get that semantic right?

Given that, the "enter" and "exit" names seem confusing.  This seems
more like a flag you can set and clear, rather than a delimited region
as suggested by an enter/exit pair.

How about something vaguely like rcu_user_irq_set_eqs and
rcu_user_irq_clear_eqs?

- Josh Triplett
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