linux/Documentation/driver-api
Rafael J. Wysocki 72175d4ea4 driver core: Make driver core own stateful device links
Even though stateful device links are managed by the driver core in
principle, their creators are allowed and sometimes even expected
to drop references to them via device_link_del() or
device_link_remove(), but that doesn't really play well with the
"persistent" link concept.

If "persistent" managed device links are created from driver
probe callbacks, device_link_add() called to do that will take a
new reference on the link each time the callback runs and those
references will never be dropped, which kind of isn't nice.

This issues arises because of the link reference counting carried
out by device_link_add() for existing links, but that is only done to
avoid deleting device links that may still be necessary, which
shouldn't be a concern for managed (stateful) links.  These device
links are managed by the driver core and whoever creates one of them
will need it at least as long as until the consumer driver is detached
from its device and deleting it may be left to the driver core just
fine.

For this reason, rework device_link_add() to apply the reference
counting to stateless links only and make device_link_del() and
device_link_remove() drop references to stateless links only too.
After this change, if called to add a stateful device link for
a consumer-supplier pair for which a stateful device link is
present already, device_link_add() will return the existing link
without incrementing its reference counter.  Accordingly,
device_link_del() and device_link_remove() will WARN() and do
nothing when called to drop a reference to a stateful link.  Thus,
effectively, all stateful device links will be owned by the driver
core.

In addition, clean up the handling of the link management flags,
DL_FLAG_AUTOREMOVE_CONSUMER and DL_FLAG_AUTOREMOVE_SUPPLIER, so that
(a) they are never set at the same time and (b) if device_link_add()
is called for a consumer-supplier pair with an existing stateful link
between them, the flags of that link will be combined with the flags
passed to device_link_add() to ensure that the life time of the link
is sufficient for all of the callers of device_link_add() for the
same consumer-supplier pair.

Update the device_link_add() kerneldoc comment to reflect the
above changes.

Signed-off-by: Rafael J. Wysocki <rafael.j.wysocki@intel.com>
Signed-off-by: Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@linuxfoundation.org>
2019-02-01 10:04:08 +01:00
..
80211 cfg80211: remove unused function ieee80211_data_from_8023() 2017-09-21 11:42:02 +02:00
dmaengine dmaengine-4.21-rc1 2019-01-01 15:45:48 -08:00
firmware Documentation: driver-api: add stratix10 service layer 2018-11-26 20:15:07 +01:00
fpga docs: fpga: document programming fpgas using regions 2018-10-16 11:13:50 +02:00
gpio gpio: Pass a flag to gpiochip_request_own_desc() 2018-12-14 14:24:33 +01:00
i3c docs: driver-api: Add I3C documentation 2018-11-12 10:33:49 +01:00
iio docs: driver-api: add iio hw consumer section 2018-01-10 10:30:06 +00:00
pci PCI/P2PDMA: Clean up documentation and kernel-doc 2018-12-11 07:53:07 -06:00
pm doc:process: add links where missing 2018-12-06 10:21:19 -07:00
soundwire Documentation: soundwire: fix stream.rst markup warnings 2018-09-17 09:12:36 -07:00
usb usb: typec: Improve Alt Mode documentation 2018-12-19 08:13:25 +01:00
basics.rst docs: Introduce deprecated APIs list 2018-10-18 12:22:43 -06:00
clk.rst This time we have a good set of changes to the core framework that do some 2018-06-09 12:06:24 -07:00
conf.py doc-rst: make driver-api folder buildable stand-alone 2016-10-26 17:25:00 -06:00
device_connection.rst Documentation: driver-api: fix device_connection.rst kernel-doc error 2018-04-27 17:17:34 -06:00
device_link.rst driver core: Make driver core own stateful device links 2019-02-01 10:04:08 +01:00
device-io.rst docs: Convert the deviceio template to RST 2017-01-31 17:31:21 -07:00
dma-buf.rst dma-fence: Polish kernel-doc for dma-fence.c 2018-07-04 12:18:37 +02:00
edac.rst edac.rst: move concepts dictionary from edac.h 2016-12-15 08:58:12 -02:00
firewire.rst FireWire: add driver-api Introduction section 2018-09-06 09:41:16 -06:00
frame-buffer.rst
hsi.rst docs: split up serial-interfaces.rst 2016-09-06 09:14:52 -06:00
i2c.rst Merge branch 'i2c/for-4.13' of git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/wsa/linux 2017-07-12 10:04:56 -07:00
index.rst docs: driver-api: Add I3C documentation 2018-11-12 10:33:49 +01:00
infrastructure.rst dma-mapping: move all DMA mapping code to kernel/dma 2018-06-14 08:50:37 +02:00
input.rst
libata.rst libata: remove ata_sff_data_xfer_noirq() 2018-07-11 10:45:28 -07:00
message-based.rst docs: Don't format internal MPT docs 2016-09-06 09:15:48 -06:00
misc_devices.rst docs-rst: core_api: move driver-specific stuff to drivers_api 2017-04-02 14:17:43 -06:00
miscellaneous.rst docs: driver-api: Remove trailing blank line 2017-08-07 14:27:45 -06:00
mtdnand.rst mtd: rawnand: Deprecate ->chip_delay 2018-10-03 11:12:25 +02:00
pinctl.rst pinctrl/gpio: Unify namespace for cross-calls 2017-09-22 11:02:10 +02:00
rapidio.rst docs-rst: convert rapidio book to ReST 2017-05-16 08:44:16 -03:00
regulator.rst docs: Convert the regulator docbook to RST 2017-01-31 17:31:41 -07:00
s390-drivers.rst s390/docs: reword airq section 2018-02-02 10:47:15 +01:00
scsi.rst scsi: target: add driver-api document 2018-04-20 19:14:40 -04:00
slimbus.rst slimbus: stream: add stream support 2018-07-07 17:25:23 +02:00
sound.rst
spi.rst docs: split up serial-interfaces.rst 2016-09-06 09:14:52 -06:00
target.rst scsi: target: add driver-api document 2018-04-20 19:14:40 -04:00
uio-howto.rst docs/uio: fix a grammar nitpick 2018-10-16 11:15:51 +02:00
vme.rst docs: Update VME documentation to include kerneldoc comments 2017-03-17 15:10:49 +09:00
w1.rst There has been a fair amount of activity in the docs tree this time 2017-07-03 21:13:25 -07:00