Am 12.06.2015 um 13:19 schrieb Alexander Holler: > Am 12.06.2015 um 09:25 schrieb Linus Walleij: >> On Thu, Jun 11, 2015 at 6:40 PM, Alexander Holler >> <holler at ahsoftware.de> wrote: >>> Am 11.06.2015 um 14:30 schrieb Linus Walleij: >> >>>> Certainly it is possible to create deadlocks in this scenario, but the >>>> scope is not to create an ubreakable system. >>> >>> IAnd what happens if you run into a deadlock? Do you print "you've >>> lost, try >>> changing your kernel config" in some output hidden by a >>> splash-screen? ;) >> >> Sorry it sounds like a blanket argument, the fact that there are >> mutexes in the kernel makes it possible to deadlock, it doesn't >> mean we don't use mutexes. Some programming problems are >> just like such. > > I'm not talking about specific deadlocks through mutexes. I'm talking > about what happens when driver A needs driver B which needs driver A. > How do you recognise and handle that with your instrumented on-demand > device initialization? Such a circular dependency might happen by just > adding a new fucntion call or by changing the kernel configuration. And > with the on-demand stuff, the possibility that the developer introducing > this new (maybe optional) call will never hit such a circular dependency > is high. So you will end up with a never ending stream of problem > reports whenever someone introduced such a circular dependecy without > having noticed it. > > And to come back to specific deadlocks, if you are extending function > calls from something former simple to something which might initialize a > whole bunch of drivers, needing maybe seconds, I wouldn't say this is a > blanket argument, but a real thread.
Keep in mind, that the possibility that a function call ends up with initializing a whole bunch of other drivers, is not determined statically, but depends on the configuration and runtime behaviour of the actual system the on-demand stuff actually happens. E.g. if driver A is faster one system that driver B, the whole bunch of drivers might become initialized by a call in driver A. But if driver B was faster on the developers system (or the system is configured to first init driver B), than the whole bunch of drivers might have become initialized by driver B on the developers system. Thus he never might have hit a possible problem when the whole bunch of drivers got initialized in driver A. That means it isn't always a good idea to create dynamic systems (like on-demand device initialization), because it's very hard to foresee and correctly handle their runtime behaviour. > Alexander Holler