Re: [PATCH] Releasing resources with children

[Russell King <rmk+lkml@arm.linux.org.uk>]

On Mon, Mar 14, 2005 at 10:49:16AM -0700, Matthew Wilcox wrote:
> What does it mean to release a resource with children?  Should the
> children become children of the released resource's parent?  Should they
> be released too?  Should we fail the release?

I've been running kernels with:

+       if (old->child) {
+               printk("Resource %p still has children: %s\n", old, old->name);
+               return -EINVAL;
+       }
+

here and it hasn't triggered once.  I suspect the reason it hasn't is
because no one does release a resource with children, but I suspect
that's just by mere luck than design.

The only thing I'd question is whether we really need to BUG_ON() here.
ISTR Linus' policy for BUG()/BUG_ON() was only if the condition lead
directly to a filesystem-corrupting bug.

-- 
Russell King
 Linux kernel    2.6 ARM Linux   - http://www.arm.linux.org.uk/
 maintainer of:  2.6 Serial core