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authorLinus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>2019-07-12 22:24:03 +0300
committerLinus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>2019-07-12 22:24:03 +0300
commitf632a8170a6b667ee4e3f552087588f0fe13c4bb (patch)
tree9fbdd3505f1471364265727dea1bc9d034cbed8f /Documentation/driver-model/design-patterns.rst
parentef8f3d48afd6a17a0dae8c277c2f539c2f19fd16 (diff)
parentc33d442328f556460b79aba6058adb37bb555389 (diff)
downloadlinux-f632a8170a6b667ee4e3f552087588f0fe13c4bb.tar.xz
Merge tag 'driver-core-5.3-rc1' of git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/gregkh/driver-core
Pull driver core and debugfs updates from Greg KH: "Here is the "big" driver core and debugfs changes for 5.3-rc1 It's a lot of different patches, all across the tree due to some api changes and lots of debugfs cleanups. Other than the debugfs cleanups, in this set of changes we have: - bus iteration function cleanups - scripts/get_abi.pl tool to display and parse Documentation/ABI entries in a simple way - cleanups to Documenatation/ABI/ entries to make them parse easier due to typos and other minor things - default_attrs use for some ktype users - driver model documentation file conversions to .rst - compressed firmware file loading - deferred probe fixes All of these have been in linux-next for a while, with a bunch of merge issues that Stephen has been patient with me for" * tag 'driver-core-5.3-rc1' of git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/gregkh/driver-core: (102 commits) debugfs: make error message a bit more verbose orangefs: fix build warning from debugfs cleanup patch ubifs: fix build warning after debugfs cleanup patch driver: core: Allow subsystems to continue deferring probe drivers: base: cacheinfo: Ensure cpu hotplug work is done before Intel RDT arch_topology: Remove error messages on out-of-memory conditions lib: notifier-error-inject: no need to check return value of debugfs_create functions swiotlb: no need to check return value of debugfs_create functions ceph: no need to check return value of debugfs_create functions sunrpc: no need to check return value of debugfs_create functions ubifs: no need to check return value of debugfs_create functions orangefs: no need to check return value of debugfs_create functions nfsd: no need to check return value of debugfs_create functions lib: 842: no need to check return value of debugfs_create functions debugfs: provide pr_fmt() macro debugfs: log errors when something goes wrong drivers: s390/cio: Fix compilation warning about const qualifiers drivers: Add generic helper to match by of_node driver_find_device: Unify the match function with class_find_device() bus_find_device: Unify the match callback with class_find_device ...
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+=============================
+Device Driver Design Patterns
+=============================
+
+This document describes a few common design patterns found in device drivers.
+It is likely that subsystem maintainers will ask driver developers to
+conform to these design patterns.
+
+1. State Container
+2. container_of()
+
+
+1. State Container
+~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
+
+While the kernel contains a few device drivers that assume that they will
+only be probed() once on a certain system (singletons), it is custom to assume
+that the device the driver binds to will appear in several instances. This
+means that the probe() function and all callbacks need to be reentrant.
+
+The most common way to achieve this is to use the state container design
+pattern. It usually has this form::
+
+ struct foo {
+ spinlock_t lock; /* Example member */
+ (...)
+ };
+
+ static int foo_probe(...)
+ {
+ struct foo *foo;
+
+ foo = devm_kzalloc(dev, sizeof(*foo), GFP_KERNEL);
+ if (!foo)
+ return -ENOMEM;
+ spin_lock_init(&foo->lock);
+ (...)
+ }
+
+This will create an instance of struct foo in memory every time probe() is
+called. This is our state container for this instance of the device driver.
+Of course it is then necessary to always pass this instance of the
+state around to all functions that need access to the state and its members.
+
+For example, if the driver is registering an interrupt handler, you would
+pass around a pointer to struct foo like this::
+
+ static irqreturn_t foo_handler(int irq, void *arg)
+ {
+ struct foo *foo = arg;
+ (...)
+ }
+
+ static int foo_probe(...)
+ {
+ struct foo *foo;
+
+ (...)
+ ret = request_irq(irq, foo_handler, 0, "foo", foo);
+ }
+
+This way you always get a pointer back to the correct instance of foo in
+your interrupt handler.
+
+
+2. container_of()
+~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
+
+Continuing on the above example we add an offloaded work::
+
+ struct foo {
+ spinlock_t lock;
+ struct workqueue_struct *wq;
+ struct work_struct offload;
+ (...)
+ };
+
+ static void foo_work(struct work_struct *work)
+ {
+ struct foo *foo = container_of(work, struct foo, offload);
+
+ (...)
+ }
+
+ static irqreturn_t foo_handler(int irq, void *arg)
+ {
+ struct foo *foo = arg;
+
+ queue_work(foo->wq, &foo->offload);
+ (...)
+ }
+
+ static int foo_probe(...)
+ {
+ struct foo *foo;
+
+ foo->wq = create_singlethread_workqueue("foo-wq");
+ INIT_WORK(&foo->offload, foo_work);
+ (...)
+ }
+
+The design pattern is the same for an hrtimer or something similar that will
+return a single argument which is a pointer to a struct member in the
+callback.
+
+container_of() is a macro defined in <linux/kernel.h>
+
+What container_of() does is to obtain a pointer to the containing struct from
+a pointer to a member by a simple subtraction using the offsetof() macro from
+standard C, which allows something similar to object oriented behaviours.
+Notice that the contained member must not be a pointer, but an actual member
+for this to work.
+
+We can see here that we avoid having global pointers to our struct foo *
+instance this way, while still keeping the number of parameters passed to the
+work function to a single pointer.