Messages in this thread | | | Date | Tue, 13 Dec 2005 08:35:41 -0600 | From | "Christopher Friesen" <> | Subject | Re: [PATCH 1/19] MUTEX: Introduce simple mutex implementation |
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David Howells wrote: > Alan Cox <alan@lxorguk.ukuu.org.uk> wrote:
>>It seems to me it would be far far saner to define something like >> >> sleep_lock(&foo) >> sleep_unlock(&foo) >> sleep_trylock(&foo) > > Which would be a _lot_ more work. It would involve about ten times as many > changes, I think, and thus be more prone to errors.
"lots of work" has never been a valid reason for not doing a kernel change...
In this case, introducing a new API means the changes can be made over time.
As time goes on you can convert more and more code to the mutex/sleep lock and any tricky code just stays with the older API until someone who understands it can vet it.
As Alan mentioned, the standard counting semaphore API is up/down. Making those refer to a sleeping mutex violates the principle of least surprise.
Chris
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