I don't see why the two have to be dependent for this to work. Do you
mean by the parent posting a job, the state machine stepping code would
handling the actual posting? I was assuming that the parent state
action could just call job_concurrent_sm_post (or whatever its called).
Could it be similar to the request scheduler job posting code? The
parent state action could call job_concurrent_sm_post with an array of
the child sms, which just calls sm_post and adds the parent sm and its
array to an operation queue. Then a job_concurrent_sm_test function
could test for completion of a parent sm by looking at all the sms in
the array to see if they completed. The job_testcontext code would
have to be modified of course (maybe rework the
do_one_test_cycle_req_sched function to also test parent sm jobs), but
all of that still seems to be independent of the state machine code
(i.e. someone could use the state machine code separately and drive
state machines using something other than the job framework). I don't
know if all that makes sense in the context of the changes you've made,
but that's what I had in mind when I suggested posting a job for the
parent.
I think I follow what you are describing, but I am not entirely sure.
If so, I think there is one advantage to the approach that Walt has been
hashing out thus far. I think that what Walt is describing is
event-driven, in a sense. No one has to actively look to see if all of
the children have finished. Instead, the children each send
notification (by calling a release function or manually decrementing a
counter) in their completion function, with the parent eventually
getting a single notification (representing all of the children) through
the existing job completion queue mechanism.
I think that the way that you describe would work fine too, but it would
require a little more active work to check the status of the array of
child SMs and would require more code to keep track of them.
I think you are right though, that you could pull off your version
without the the children actually having to make a job_* call.
-Phil
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