From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1753341AbbCaUhV (ORCPT ); Tue, 31 Mar 2015 16:37:21 -0400 Received: from cantor2.suse.de ([195.135.220.15]:38911 "EHLO mx2.suse.de" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1752215AbbCaUhQ (ORCPT ); Tue, 31 Mar 2015 16:37:16 -0400 Message-ID: <1427834205.20009.19.camel@stgolabs.net> Subject: Re: Revised futex(2) man page for review From: Davidlohr Bueso To: Peter Zijlstra Cc: "Michael Kerrisk (man-pages)" , Thomas Gleixner , Darren Hart , "Carlos O'Donell" , Ingo Molnar , Jakub Jelinek , "linux-man@vger.kernel.org" , lkml , Arnd Bergmann , Steven Rostedt , Linux API , Torvald Riegel , Roland McGrath , Darren Hart , Anton Blanchard , Eric Dumazet , bill o gallmeister , Jan Kiszka , Daniel Wagner , Rich Felker , Andy Lutomirski , bert hubert , Rusty Russell , Heinrich Schuchardt Date: Tue, 31 Mar 2015 13:36:45 -0700 In-Reply-To: <20150328120337.GB32047@worktop.ger.corp.intel.com> References: <55166C01.7000803@gmail.com> <20150328114725.GJ27490@worktop.programming.kicks-ass.net> <20150328120337.GB32047@worktop.ger.corp.intel.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="UTF-8" X-Mailer: Evolution 3.12.9 Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org List-ID: X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org On Sat, 2015-03-28 at 13:03 +0100, Peter Zijlstra wrote: > > If the timeout argument is non-NULL, its contents specify a rel‐ > > ative timeout for the wait, measured according to the > > CLOCK_MONOTONIC clock. (This interval will be rounded up to the > > system clock granularity, and kernel scheduling delays mean that > > the blocking interval may overrun by a small amount.) If time‐ > > out is NULL, the call blocks indefinitely. > > Would it not be better to only state that the wait will not return > before the timeout -- unless woken -- and not bother with clock > granularity and scheduling delays? Yeah, similarly we also have this: FUTEX_PRIVATE_FLAG (since Linux 2.6.22) This option bit can be employed with all futex operations. It tells the kernel that the futex is process-private and not shared with another process (i.e., it is only being used for synchronization between threads of the same process). This allows the kernel to choose the fast path for validating the user-space address and avoids expensive VMA lookups, taking ref‐ erence counts on file backing store, and so on. This to me reads a bit too much into the kernel (fastpath, refcnt, vmas). Why not just mention that it avoids overhead in the kernel or something? I don't recall any manpage mentioning such details, but I could be wrong. In any case its a nit, the whole doc is pretty good and I hope you can merge it soon and then just increment ;) Thanks, Davidlohr