Re: [patch 3/3] tick: Annotate tick_do_timer_cpu data races

[Thomas Gleixner]

On Mon, Dec 07 2020 at 19:19, Marco Elver wrote:
> On Mon, 7 Dec 2020 at 18:46, Thomas Gleixner <tglx@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>> On Mon, Dec 07 2020 at 13:09, Peter Zijlstra wrote:
>> > I prefer the form:
>> >
>> >       if (data_race(tick_do_timer_cpu == TICK_DO_TIMER_BOOT)) {
>> >
>> > But there doesn't yet seem to be sufficient data_race() usage in the
>> > kernel to see which of the forms is preferred. Do we want to bike-shed
>> > this now and document the outcome somewhere?
>>
>> Yes please before we get a gazillion of patches changing half of them
>> half a year from now.
>
> That rule should be as simple as possible. The simplest would be:
> "Only enclose the smallest required expression in data_race(); keep
> the number of required data_race() expressions to a minimum." (=> want
> least amount of code inside data_race() with the least number of
> data_race()s).
>
> In the case here, that'd be the "if (data_race(tick_do_timer_cpu) ==
> ..." variant.
>
> Otherwise there's the possibility that we'll end up with accesses
> inside data_race() that we hadn't planned for. For example, somebody
> refactors some code replacing constants with variables.
>
> I currently don't know what the rule for Peter's preferred variant
> would be, without running the risk of some accidentally data_race()'d
> accesses.

I agree. Lets keep it simple and have the data_race() only covering the
actual access to the racy variable, struct member.

The worst case we could end up with would be

    if (data_race(A) == data_race(B))

which would still be clearly isolated. The racy part is not the
comparison, it's the accesses which can cause random results for the
comparison.

Thanks,

        tglx