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SubjectRe: New resources - pls, explain :-(


On Sat, 14 Aug 1999, Pavel Machek wrote:
> >
> > - writel() - strict ordering
> > - __writel() - only to be used for people who REALLY know that they don't
> > care about ordering.
>
> Please please, don't let '__' make the difference. writel_noorder
> seems better.

Note that the Linux internal convention has always been to have the __
mean that it's somehow a more "basic" function.

For example, __writel() might mean more than "no re-ordering". It might
mean "naked IO access" - which would include the fact that it does not do
any byte swapping etc, for example (just to tie this in with the original
discussion). Think of it as the conceptual basis for the "real" writel(),
that people can use when they want to build up their own IO primitives
from the basic blocks.

I don't mind giving people building blocks - I much _prefer_ letting
people access the infrastructure than trying to build up some magic "good
interface" thing, for example. Abstraction only gets you so far..

So a __writel() thing would be equivalent to __put_user(): the same way
that __put_user() only does the actual physical user mode access,
__writel() would only do the actual physical PCI/MCA/whatever access.
Anybody who uses __put_user() needs to be extra careful and guarantee that
he has already done all the security checks - and anybody using __writel()
needs to make sure that he does the re-ordering and byte order stuff at a
higher level.

The fundamental thing I dislike about "writel_be()" or something like that
is that I don't much see the point. "Bigendian" doesn't buy you anything
at all, and would always be conditionalized on what the CPU endianness is.
In contrast, I _do_ see the point in something like "raw access". It makes
sense on a conceptual level.

It seems to me that at least the fbcon people want more than just to avoid
byte swapping: wat they fundamentally want is not non-byte-swapped data,
they really fundamentally want control at a very low level. I bet they'd
be happy with not just avoiding the byte swap, but also avoiding the
ordering constraints (or at least controlling them on a higher level).

So __writel() would probably fit their needs better too than any
"big-endian" or "native-endian" thing - because it really fundamentally is
about direct access rather than about endianness.

Linus


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