doc: Present the role of READ_ONCE()

This commit adds an explanation of the special cases where READ_ONCE()
may be used in place of a member of the rcu_dereference() family.

Signed-off-by: Paul E. McKenney <paulmck@kernel.org>
This commit is contained in:
Paul E. McKenney 2020-09-24 20:53:25 -07:00
parent 3650b228f8
commit 86b5a7381b
2 changed files with 13 additions and 0 deletions

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@ -314,6 +314,13 @@ over a rather long period of time, but improvements are always welcome!
shared between readers and updaters. Additional primitives
are provided for this case, as discussed in lockdep.txt.
One exception to this rule is when data is only ever added to
the linked data structure, and is never removed during any
time that readers might be accessing that structure. In such
cases, READ_ONCE() may be used in place of rcu_dereference()
and the read-side markers (rcu_read_lock() and rcu_read_unlock(),
for example) may be omitted.
10. Conversely, if you are in an RCU read-side critical section,
and you don't hold the appropriate update-side lock, you -must-
use the "_rcu()" variants of the list macros. Failing to do so

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@ -28,6 +28,12 @@ Follow these rules to keep your RCU code working properly:
for an example where the compiler can in fact deduce the exact
value of the pointer, and thus cause misordering.
- In the special case where data is added but is never removed
while readers are accessing the structure, READ_ONCE() may be used
instead of rcu_dereference(). In this case, use of READ_ONCE()
takes on the role of the lockless_dereference() primitive that
was removed in v4.15.
- You are only permitted to use rcu_dereference on pointer values.
The compiler simply knows too much about integral values to
trust it to carry dependencies through integer operations.