Hi Jan,
On 23/07/2020 12:23, Jan Beulich wrote:
On 22.07.2020 18:53, Julien Grall wrote:
--- a/xen/arch/x86/irq.c
+++ b/xen/arch/x86/irq.c
@@ -1187,7 +1187,7 @@ struct irq_desc *pirq_spin_lock_irq_desc(
for ( ; ; )
{
- int irq = pirq->arch.irq;
+ int irq = read_atomic(&pirq->arch.irq);
There we go - I'd be fine this way, but I'm pretty sure Andrew
would want this to be ACCESS_ONCE(). So I guess now is the time
to settle which one to prefer in new code (or which criteria
there are to prefer one over the other).
I would prefer if we have a single way to force the compiler to do a
single access (read/write).
The existing implementation of ACCESS_ONCE() can only work on scalar
type. The implementation is based on a Linux, although we have an extra
check. Looking through the Linux history, it looks like it is not
possible to make ACCESS_ONCE() work with non-scalar types:
ACCESS_ONCE does not work reliably on non-scalar types. For
example gcc 4.6 and 4.7 might remove the volatile tag for such
accesses during the SRA (scalar replacement of aggregates) step
https://gcc.gnu.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=58145)
I understand that our implementation of read_atomic(), write_atomic()
would lead to less optimized code. So maybe we want to import
READ_ONCE() and WRITE_ONCE() from Linux?
As a side note, I have seen suggestion only (see [1]) which suggest that
they those helpers wouldn't be portable:
"One relatively unimportant misunderstanding is due to the fact that the
standard only talks about accesses to volatile objects. It does not talk
about accesses via volatile qualified pointers. Some programmers believe
that using a pointer-to-volatile should be handled as though it pointed
to a volatile object. That is not guaranteed by the standard and is
therefore not portable. However, this is relatively unimportant because
gcc does in fact treat a pointer-to-volatile as though it pointed to a
volatile object."
I would assume that the use is OK on CLang and GCC given that Linux has
been using it.
And this is of course besides the fact that I think we have many
more instances where guaranteeing a single access would be
needed, if we're afraid of the described permitted compiler
behavior. Which then makes me wonder if this is really something
we should fix one by one, rather than by at least larger scope
audits (in order to not suggest "throughout the code base").
It depends how much the contributor can invest on chasing the rest of
the issues. The larger the scope is, the less likely you will find
someone that has bandwith to allocate for fixing it completely.
If the scope is "a field", then I think it is a reasonable suggesting.
In this case, I had a look at arch.irq and wasn't able to spot other
potential issue.
As a minor remark, unless you've observed problematic behavior,
would you mind adding "potential" or "theoretical" to the title?
I am not aware of any issues with compiler so far. So I can add
"potential" in the title.
Cheers,
[1] https://www.airs.com/blog/archives/154
--
Julien Grall
