This is a new generic kernel FIFO implementation.
The current kernel fifo API is not very widely used, because it has to
many constrains. Only 17 files in the current 2.6.31-rc5 used it.
FIFO's are like list's a very basic thing and a kfifo API which handles
the most use case would save a lot of development time and memory
resources.
I think this are the reasons why kfifo is not in use:
- The API is to simple, important functions are missing
- A fifo can be only allocated dynamically
- There is a requirement of a spinlock whether you need it or not
- There is no support for data records inside a fifo
So I decided to extend the kfifo in a more generic way without blowing up
the API to much. The new API has the following benefits:
- Generic usage: For kernel internal use and/or device driver.
- Provide an API for the most use case.
- Slim API: The whole API provides 25 functions.
- Linux style habit.
- DECLARE_KFIFO, DEFINE_KFIFO and INIT_KFIFO Macros
- Direct copy_to_user from the fifo and copy_from_user into the fifo.
- The kfifo itself is an in place member of the using data structure, this save an
indirection access and does not waste the kernel allocator.
- Lockless access: if only one reader and one writer is active on the fifo,
which is the common use case, no additional locking is necessary.
- Remove spinlock - give the user the freedom of choice what kind of locking to use if
one is required.
- Ability to handle records. Three type of records are supported:
- Variable length records between 0-255 bytes, with a record size
field of 1 bytes.
- Variable length records between 0-65535 bytes, with a record size
field of 2 bytes.
- Fixed size records, which no record size field.
- Preserve memory resource.
- Performance!
- Easy to use!
This patch:
Since most users want to have the kfifo as part of another object,
reorganize the code to allow including struct kfifo in another data
structure. This requires changing the kfifo_alloc and kfifo_init
prototypes so that we pass an existing kfifo pointer into them. This
patch changes the implementation and all existing users.
[akpm@linux-foundation.org: fix warning]
Signed-off-by: Stefani Seibold <stefani@seibold.net>
Acked-by: Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@suse.de>
Acked-by: Mauro Carvalho Chehab <mchehab@redhat.com>
Acked-by: Andi Kleen <ak@linux.intel.com>
Acked-by: Arnd Bergmann <arnd@arndb.de>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
Currently kfifo cannot be used by parts of the kernel that use "const"
properly as kfifo itself does not use const for passed data blocks which
are indeed const.
Signed-off-by: Alan Cox <alan@linux.intel.com>
Signed-off-by: Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@suse.de>
Signed-off-by: Robert P. J. Day <rpjday@crashcourse.ca>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
A variety of (mostly) innocuous fixes to the embedded kernel-doc content in
source files, including:
* make multi-line initial descriptions single line
* denote some function names, constants and structs as such
* change erroneous opening '/*' to '/**' in a few places
* reword some text for clarity
Signed-off-by: Robert P. J. Day <rpjday@mindspring.com>
Cc: "Randy.Dunlap" <rdunlap@xenotime.net>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
Both __kfifo_put() and __kfifo_get() have header comments stating that if
there is but one concurrent reader and one concurrent writer, locking is not
necessary. This is almost the case, but a couple of memory barriers are
needed. Another option would be to change the header comments to remove the
bit about locking not being needed, and to change the those callers who
currently don't use locking to add the required locking. The attachment
analyzes this approach, but the patch below seems simpler.
Signed-off-by: Paul E. McKenney <paulmck@us.ibm.com>
Cc: Stelian Pop <stelian@popies.net>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@osdl.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>
- added typedef unsigned int __nocast gfp_t;
- replaced __nocast uses for gfp flags with gfp_t - it gives exactly
the same warnings as far as sparse is concerned, doesn't change
generated code (from gcc point of view we replaced unsigned int with
typedef) and documents what's going on far better.
Signed-off-by: Al Viro <viro@zeniv.linux.org.uk>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>
Initial git repository build. I'm not bothering with the full history,
even though we have it. We can create a separate "historical" git
archive of that later if we want to, and in the meantime it's about
3.2GB when imported into git - space that would just make the early
git days unnecessarily complicated, when we don't have a lot of good
infrastructure for it.
Let it rip!
