Re: [PATCH] Fix the cpumask rewrite

[James Bottomley <James.Bottomley@steeleye.com>]

On Sat, 2004-06-26 at 13:54, Linus Torvalds wrote:
> On Sat, 26 Jun 2004, Vojtech Pavlik wrote:
> > At least input pretty much relies on the fact that bitops don't need
> > locking and act as memory barriers.
> 
> Well, plain test_bit() has always been more relaxed than the others, and
> has never implied a memory barrier. Only the "test_and_set/clear()" things
> imply memory barriers.
> 
> What we _could_ do (without changing any existing rules) is to add a
> "__test_bit()" that is the relaxed version that doesn't do any of the
> volatile etc. That would match the "__"  versions of the other bit
> operations.
> 
> Then people who know that they use the bits without any volatility issues 
> can use that one, and let the compiler optimize more. 

Well, we can do this, yes.

Our test bit implementation would then become:

static __inline__ int test_bit(int nr, const volatile void *address)
{
	return __test_bit(nr, (const void *)address);
}

That would keep our implementation happy.

James