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docs: static initialization of spinlocks is OK

Static initialization of spinlocks is preferable to dynamic initialization
when it is practical.  This patch updates documentation for consistency
with comments in spinlock_types.h.

Signed-off-by: Ed L. Cashin <ecashin@coraid.com>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
Ed L. Cashin 18 years ago
parent
commit
017f021c7e
1 changed files with 11 additions and 9 deletions
  1. 11 9
      Documentation/spinlocks.txt

+ 11 - 9
Documentation/spinlocks.txt

@@ -1,7 +1,12 @@
-UPDATE March 21 2005 Amit Gud <gud@eth.net>
+SPIN_LOCK_UNLOCKED and RW_LOCK_UNLOCKED defeat lockdep state tracking and
+are hence deprecated.
 
-Macros SPIN_LOCK_UNLOCKED and RW_LOCK_UNLOCKED are deprecated and will be
-removed soon. So for any new code dynamic initialization should be used:
+Please use DEFINE_SPINLOCK()/DEFINE_RWLOCK() or
+__SPIN_LOCK_UNLOCKED()/__RW_LOCK_UNLOCKED() as appropriate for static
+initialization.
+
+Dynamic initialization, when necessary, may be performed as
+demonstrated below.
 
    spinlock_t xxx_lock;
    rwlock_t xxx_rw_lock;
@@ -15,12 +20,9 @@ removed soon. So for any new code dynamic initialization should be used:
 
    module_init(xxx_init);
 
-Reasons for deprecation
-  - it hurts automatic lock validators
-  - it becomes intrusive for the realtime preemption patches
-
-Following discussion is still valid, however, with the dynamic initialization
-of spinlocks instead of static.
+The following discussion is still valid, however, with the dynamic
+initialization of spinlocks or with DEFINE_SPINLOCK, etc., used
+instead of SPIN_LOCK_UNLOCKED.
 
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