From ee7c29be3695996536395f647e8a2ed6b1ab3a0d Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: "Paul E. McKenney" Date: Tue, 7 Apr 2015 12:45:41 -0700 Subject: [PATCH] documentation: Update rcu_dereference.txt based on WG21 discussions This commit provides another caveat for the care and feeding of pointers returned by rcu_dereference() that was pointed out in discussions within the C++ standards committee. Signed-off-by: Paul E. McKenney Reviewed-by: Mathieu Desnoyers --- Documentation/RCU/rcu_dereference.txt | 5 +++++ 1 file changed, 5 insertions(+) diff --git a/Documentation/RCU/rcu_dereference.txt b/Documentation/RCU/rcu_dereference.txt index ceb05da5a5ac..2d05c9241a33 100644 --- a/Documentation/RCU/rcu_dereference.txt +++ b/Documentation/RCU/rcu_dereference.txt @@ -193,6 +193,11 @@ o Be very careful about comparing pointers obtained from pointer. Note that the volatile cast in rcu_dereference() will normally prevent the compiler from knowing too much. + However, please note that if the compiler knows that the + pointer takes on only one of two values, a not-equal + comparison will provide exactly the information that the + compiler needs to deduce the value of the pointer. + o Disable any value-speculation optimizations that your compiler might provide, especially if you are making use of feedback-based optimizations that take data collected from prior runs. Such -- 2.39.5