Commit 0612ea00 authored by Paul E. McKenney's avatar Paul E. McKenney Committed by Linus Torvalds

rcu: documentation 1Q09 update

Update the RCU documentation to call out the need for callers of
primitives like call_rcu() and synchronize_rcu() to prevent subsequent RCU
readers from hazard.
Signed-off-by: default avatarPaul E. McKenney <paulmck@linux.vnet.ibm.com>
Cc: Ingo Molnar <mingo@elte.hu>
Signed-off-by: default avatarAndrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: default avatarLinus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
parent be50b834
......@@ -298,3 +298,15 @@ over a rather long period of time, but improvements are always welcome!
Note that, rcu_assign_pointer() and rcu_dereference() relate to
SRCU just as they do to other forms of RCU.
15. The whole point of call_rcu(), synchronize_rcu(), and friends
is to wait until all pre-existing readers have finished before
carrying out some otherwise-destructive operation. It is
therefore critically important to -first- remove any path
that readers can follow that could be affected by the
destructive operation, and -only- -then- invoke call_rcu(),
synchronize_rcu(), or friends.
Because these primitives only wait for pre-existing readers,
it is the caller's responsibility to guarantee safety to
any subsequent readers.
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