doc: completion: context, scope and language fixes

Fix for imprecise/wrong statements on context in which wait_for_completion*()
can be called, updated notes on "going out of scope" problems and some
language fixups.

Signed-off-by: Nicholas Mc Guire <hofrat@osadl.org>
Acked-by: Ingo Molnar <mingo@kernel.org>
Signed-off-by: Jonathan Corbet <corbet@lwn.net>

1 files changed, 55 insertions, 44 deletions

diff --git a/Documentation/scheduler/completion.txt b/Documentation/scheduler/completion.txt
index f77651eca31e..083d9c931b8d 100644
--- a/Documentation/scheduler/completion.txt
+++ b/Documentation/scheduler/completion.txt
@@ -11,11 +11,11 @@ to have reached a point or a specific state, completions can provide a race
 free solution to this problem. Semantically they are somewhat like a
 pthread_barriers and have similar use-cases.
 
-Completions are a code synchronization mechanism that is preferable to any
+Completions are a code synchronization mechanism which are preferable to any
 misuse of locks. Any time you think of using yield() or some quirky
 msleep(1); loop to allow something else to proceed, you probably want to
 look into using one of the wait_for_completion*() calls instead. The
-advantage of using completions is clear intent of the code but also more
+advantage of using completions is clear intent of the code, but also more
 efficient code as both threads can continue until the result is actually
 needed.
 
@@ -24,7 +24,7 @@ with the event reduced to a simple flag appropriately called "done" in
 struct completion, that tells the waiting threads of execution if they
 can continue safely.
 
-As completions are scheduling related the code is found in
+As completions are scheduling related, the code is found in
 kernel/sched/completion.c - for details on completion design and
 implementation see completions-design.txt
 
@@ -32,9 +32,9 @@ implementation see completions-design.txt
 Usage:
 ------
 
-There are three parts to the using completions, the initialization of the
+There are three parts to using completions, the initialization of the
 struct completion, the waiting part through a call to one of the variants of
-wait_for_completion() and the signaling side through a call to complete(),
+wait_for_completion() and the signaling side through a call to complete()
 or complete_all(). Further there are some helper functions for checking the
 state of completions.
 
@@ -50,7 +50,7 @@ handling of completions is:
 providing the wait queue to place tasks on for waiting and the flag for
 indicating the state of affairs.
 
-Completions should be named to convey the intent of the waiter.  A good
+Completions should be named to convey the intent of the waiter. A good
 example is:
 
         wait_for_completion(&early_console_added);
@@ -73,7 +73,7 @@ the default state to "not available", that is, "done" is set to 0.
 
 The re-initialization function, reinit_completion(), simply resets the
 done element to "not available", thus again to 0, without touching the
-wait queue. Calling init_completion() on the same completions object is
+wait queue. Calling init_completion() on the same completion object is
 most likely a bug as it re-initializes the queue to an empty queue and
 enqueued tasks could get "lost" - use reinit_completion() in that case.
 
@@ -87,10 +87,17 @@ initialization should always use:
         DECLARE_COMPLETION_ONSTACK(setup_done)
 
 suitable for automatic/local variables on the stack and will make lockdep
-happy. Note also that one needs to making *sure* the completion passt to
+happy. Note also that one needs to make *sure* the completion passed to
 work threads remains in-scope, and no references remain to on-stack data
 when the initiating function returns.
 
+Using on-stack completions for code that calls any of the _timeout or
+_interruptible/_killable variants is not advisable as they will require
+additional synchronization to prevent the on-stack completion object in
+the timeout/signal cases from going out of scope. Consider using dynamically
+allocated completions when intending to use the _interruptible/_killable
+or _timeout variants of wait_for_completion().
+
 
 Waiting for completions:
 ------------------------
@@ -101,21 +108,22 @@ A typical usage scenario is:
 
         structure completion setup_done;
         init_completion(&setup_done);
-        initialze_work(...,&setup_done,...)
+        initialize_work(...,&setup_done,...)
 
         /* run non-dependent code */              /* do setup */
 
-        wait_for_completion(&seupt_done);         complete(setup_done)
+        wait_for_completion(&setup_done);         complete(setup_done)
 
-This is not implying any temporal order of wait_for_completion() and the
+This is not implying any temporal order on wait_for_completion() and the
 call to complete() - if the call to complete() happened before the call
 to wait_for_completion() then the waiting side simply will continue
-immediately as all dependencies are satisfied.
+immediately as all dependencies are satisfied if not it will block until
+completion is signaled by complete().
 
 Note that wait_for_completion() is calling spin_lock_irq/spin_unlock_irq
 so it can only be called safely when you know that interrupts are enabled.
-Calling it from hard-irq context will result in hard to detect spurious
-enabling of interrupts.
+Calling it from hard-irq or irqs-off atomic contexts will result in hard
+to detect spurious enabling of interrupts.
 
 wait_for_completion():
 
@@ -123,10 +131,13 @@ wait_for_completion():
 
 The default behavior is to wait without a timeout and mark the task as
 uninterruptible. wait_for_completion() and its variants are only safe
-in soft-interrupt or process context but not in hard-irq context.
+in process context (as they can sleep) but not in atomic context,
+interrupt context, with disabled irqs. or preemption is disabled - see also
+try_wait_for_completion() below for handling completion in atomic/interrupt
+context.
+
 As all variants of wait_for_completion() can (obviously) block for a long
-time, you probably don't want to call this with held locks - see also
-try_wait_for_completion() below.
+time, you probably don't want to call this with held mutexes.
 
 
 Variants available:
@@ -141,20 +152,20 @@ A common problem that occurs is to have unclean assignment of return types,
 so care should be taken with assigning return-values to variables of proper
 type. Checking for the specific meaning of return values also has been found
 to be quite inaccurate e.g. constructs like
-if(!wait_for_completion_interruptible_timeout(...)) would execute the same
+if (!wait_for_completion_interruptible_timeout(...)) would execute the same
 code path for successful completion and for the interrupted case - which is
 probably not what you want.
 
         int wait_for_completion_interruptible(struct completion *done)
 
-marking the task TASK_INTERRUPTIBLE. If a signal was received while waiting.
-It will return -ERESTARTSYS and 0 otherwise.
+This function marks the task TASK_INTERRUPTIBLE. If a signal was received
+while waiting it will return -ERESTARTSYS and 0 otherwise.
 
         unsigned long wait_for_completion_timeout(struct completion *done,
                 unsigned long timeout)
 
-The task is marked as TASK_UNINTERRUPTIBLE and will wait at most timeout
-(in jiffies). If timeout occurs it return 0 else the remaining time in
+The task is marked as TASK_UNINTERRUPTIBLE and will wait at most 'timeout'
+(in jiffies). If timeout occurs it returns 0 else the remaining time in
 jiffies (but at least 1). Timeouts are preferably passed by msecs_to_jiffies()
 or usecs_to_jiffies(). If the returned timeout value is deliberately ignored
 a comment should probably explain why (e.g. see drivers/mfd/wm8350-core.c
@@ -163,21 +174,21 @@ wm8350_read_auxadc())
         long wait_for_completion_interruptible_timeout(
                 struct completion *done, unsigned long timeout)
 
-passing a timeout in jiffies and marking the task as TASK_INTERRUPTIBLE. If a
-signal was received it will return -ERESTARTSYS, 0 if completion timed-out and
-the remaining time in jiffies if completion occurred.
+This function passes a timeout in jiffies and marking the task as
+TASK_INTERRUPTIBLE. If a signal was received it will return -ERESTARTSYS, 0 if
+completion timed out and the remaining time in jiffies if completion occurred.
 
 Further variants include _killable which passes TASK_KILLABLE as the
-designated tasks state and will return a -ERESTARTSYS if interrupted or
-else 0 if completions was achieved as well as a _timeout variant.
+designated tasks state and will return -ERESTARTSYS if interrupted or
+else 0 if completion was achieved as well as a _timeout variant.
 
         long wait_for_completion_killable(struct completion *done)
         long wait_for_completion_killable_timeout(struct completion *done,
                 unsigned long timeout)
 
-The _io variants wait_for_completion_io behave the same as the non-_io
+The _io variants wait_for_completion_io() behave the same as the non-_io
 variants, except for accounting waiting time as waiting on IO, which has
-an impact on how scheduling is calculated.
+an impact on how the task is accounted in scheduling stats.
 
         void wait_for_completion_io(struct completion *done)
         unsigned long wait_for_completion_io_timeout(struct completion *done
@@ -187,13 +198,13 @@ an impact on how scheduling is calculated.
 Signaling completions:
 ----------------------
 
-A thread of execution that wants to signal that the conditions for
-continuation have been achieved calls complete() to signal exactly one
-of the waiters that it can continue.
+A thread that wants to signal that the conditions for continuation have been
+achieved calls complete() to signal exactly one of the waiters that it can
+continue.
 
         void complete(struct completion *done)
 
-or calls complete_all to signal all current and future waiters.
+or calls complete_all() to signal all current and future waiters.
 
         void complete_all(struct completion *done)
 
@@ -205,32 +216,32 @@ wakeup order is the same in which they were enqueued (FIFO order).
 If complete() is called multiple times then this will allow for that number
 of waiters to continue - each call to complete() will simply increment the
 done element. Calling complete_all() multiple times is a bug though. Both
-complete() and complete_all() can be called in hard-irq context safely.
+complete() and complete_all() can be called in hard-irq/atomic context safely.
 
 There only can be one thread calling complete() or complete_all() on a
-particular struct completions at any time - serialized through the wait
+particular struct completion at any time - serialized through the wait
 queue spinlock. Any such concurrent calls to complete() or complete_all()
 probably are a design bug.
 
 Signaling completion from hard-irq context is fine as it will appropriately
-lock with spin_lock_irqsave/spin_unlock_irqrestore.
+lock with spin_lock_irqsave/spin_unlock_irqrestore and it will never sleep.
 
 
 try_wait_for_completion()/completion_done():
 --------------------------------------------
 
-The try_wait_for_completion will not put the thread on the wait queue but
-rather returns false if it would need to enqueue (block) the thread, else it
-consumes any posted completions and returns true.
+The try_wait_for_completion() function will not put the thread on the wait
+queue but rather returns false if it would need to enqueue (block) the thread,
+else it consumes any posted completions and returns true.
 
-     bool try_wait_for_completion(struct completion *done)
+        bool try_wait_for_completion(struct completion *done)
 
-Finally to check state of a completions without changing it in any way is
-provided by completion_done() returning false if there are any posted
+Finally to check state of a completion without changing it in any way is
+provided by completion_done() returning false if there is any posted
 completion that was not yet consumed by waiters implying that there are
 waiters and true otherwise;
 
-     bool completion_done(struct completion *done)
+        bool completion_done(struct completion *done)
 
 Both try_wait_for_completion() and completion_done() are safe to be called in
-hard-irq context.
+hard-irq or atomic context.