[PATCH] RCU documentation fixes (January 2006 update)

Updates to in-tree RCU documentation based on comments over the past few
months.

Signed-off-by: "Paul E. McKenney" <paulmck@us.ibm.com>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@osdl.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>

1 files changed, 17 insertions, 12 deletions

diff --git a/Documentation/RCU/whatisRCU.txt b/Documentation/RCU/whatisRCU.txt
index 15da16861fa3..5ed85af88789 100644
--- a/Documentation/RCU/whatisRCU.txt
+++ b/Documentation/RCU/whatisRCU.txt
@@ -200,10 +200,11 @@ rcu_assign_pointer()
         the new value, and also executes any memory-barrier instructions
         required for a given CPU architecture.
 
-        Perhaps more important, it serves to document which pointers
-        are protected by RCU.  That said, rcu_assign_pointer() is most
-        frequently used indirectly, via the _rcu list-manipulation
-        primitives such as list_add_rcu().
+        Perhaps just as important, it serves to document (1) which
+        pointers are protected by RCU and (2) the point at which a
+        given structure becomes accessible to other CPUs.  That said,
+        rcu_assign_pointer() is most frequently used indirectly, via
+        the _rcu list-manipulation primitives such as list_add_rcu().
 
 rcu_dereference()
 
@@ -258,9 +259,11 @@ rcu_dereference()
         locking.
 
         As with rcu_assign_pointer(), an important function of
-        rcu_dereference() is to document which pointers are protected
-        by RCU.  And, again like rcu_assign_pointer(), rcu_dereference()
-        is typically used indirectly, via the _rcu list-manipulation
+        rcu_dereference() is to document which pointers are protected by
+        RCU, in particular, flagging a pointer that is subject to changing
+        at any time, including immediately after the rcu_dereference().
+        And, again like rcu_assign_pointer(), rcu_dereference() is
+        typically used indirectly, via the _rcu list-manipulation
         primitives, such as list_for_each_entry_rcu().
 
 The following diagram shows how each API communicates among the
@@ -327,7 +330,7 @@ for specialized uses, but are relatively uncommon.
 3.  WHAT ARE SOME EXAMPLE USES OF CORE RCU API?
 
 This section shows a simple use of the core RCU API to protect a
-global pointer to a dynamically allocated structure.  More typical
+global pointer to a dynamically allocated structure.  More-typical
 uses of RCU may be found in listRCU.txt, arrayRCU.txt, and NMI-RCU.txt.
 
         struct foo {
@@ -410,6 +413,8 @@ o	Use synchronize_rcu() -after- removing a data element from an
         data item.
 
 See checklist.txt for additional rules to follow when using RCU.
+And again, more-typical uses of RCU may be found in listRCU.txt,
+arrayRCU.txt, and NMI-RCU.txt.
 
 
 4.  WHAT IF MY UPDATING THREAD CANNOT BLOCK?
@@ -513,7 +518,7 @@ production-quality implementation, and see:
 
 for papers describing the Linux kernel RCU implementation.  The OLS'01
 and OLS'02 papers are a good introduction, and the dissertation provides
-more details on the current implementation.
+more details on the current implementation as of early 2004.
 
 
 5A.  "TOY" IMPLEMENTATION #1: LOCKING
@@ -768,7 +773,6 @@ RCU pointer/list traversal:
         rcu_dereference
         list_for_each_rcu               (to be deprecated in favor of
                                          list_for_each_entry_rcu)
-        list_for_each_safe_rcu          (deprecated, not used)
         list_for_each_entry_rcu
         list_for_each_continue_rcu      (to be deprecated in favor of new
                                          list_for_each_entry_continue_rcu)
@@ -807,7 +811,8 @@ Quick Quiz #1:	Why is this argument naive?  How could a deadlock
 Answer:         Consider the following sequence of events:
 
                 1.      CPU 0 acquires some unrelated lock, call it
-                        "problematic_lock".
+                        "problematic_lock", disabling irq via
+                        spin_lock_irqsave().
 
                 2.      CPU 1 enters synchronize_rcu(), write-acquiring
                         rcu_gp_mutex.
@@ -894,7 +899,7 @@ Answer:		Just as PREEMPT_RT permits preemption of spinlock
 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
 
 My thanks to the people who helped make this human-readable, including
-Jon Walpole, Josh Triplett, Serge Hallyn, and Suzanne Wood.
+Jon Walpole, Josh Triplett, Serge Hallyn, Suzanne Wood, and Alan Stern.
 
 
 For more information, see http://www.rdrop.com/users/paulmck/RCU.