Re: [PATCH 1/1] Fix: trace sched switch start/stop racy updates

From: Paul E. McKenney
Date: Tue Aug 20 2019 - 16:32:15 EST


On Tue, Aug 20, 2019 at 04:01:16PM +0200, Peter Zijlstra wrote:
> On Fri, Aug 16, 2019 at 09:52:17PM -0700, Paul E. McKenney wrote:
> > On Fri, Aug 16, 2019 at 03:57:43PM -0700, Linus Torvalds wrote:
> >
> > [ . . . ]
> >
> > > We add READ_ONCE and WRITE_ONCE annotations when they make sense. Not
> > > because of some theoretical "compiler is free to do garbage"
> > > arguments. If such garbage happens, we need to fix the compiler, the
> > > same way we already do with
> > >
> > > -fno-strict-aliasing
> >
> > Yeah, the compete-with-FORTRAN stuff. :-/
> >
> > There is some work going on in the C committee on this, where the
> > theorists would like to restrict strict-alias based optimizations to
> > enable better analysis tooling. And no, although the theorists are
> > pushing in the direction we would like them to, as far as I can see
> > they are not pushing as far as we would like. But it might be that
> > -fno-strict-aliasing needs some upgrades as well. I expect to learn
> > more at the next meeting in a few months.
> >
> > http://www.open-std.org/jtc1/sc22/wg14/www/docs/n2364.pdf
> > http://www.open-std.org/jtc1/sc22/wg14/www/docs/n2363.pdf
> > http://www.open-std.org/jtc1/sc22/wg14/www/docs/n2362.pdf
>
> We really should get the compiler folks to give us a
> -fno-pointer-provenance. Waiting on the standards committee to get their
> act together seems unlikely, esp. given that some people actually seem
> to _want_ this nonsense :/

The reason that they want it is to enable some significant optimizations
in numerical code on the one hand and in heavily templated C++ code on
the other. Neither of which has much bearing on kernel code.

Interested in coming to the next C standards committee meeting in October
to help me push for this? ;-)

Thanx, Paul