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+=======================
+IRQ-flags state tracing
+=======================
+
+:Author: started by Ingo Molnar <mingo@redhat.com>
+
+The "irq-flags tracing" feature "traces" hardirq and softirq state, in
+that it gives interested subsystems an opportunity to be notified of
+every hardirqs-off/hardirqs-on, softirqs-off/softirqs-on event that
+happens in the kernel.
+
+CONFIG_TRACE_IRQFLAGS_SUPPORT is needed for CONFIG_PROVE_SPIN_LOCKING
+and CONFIG_PROVE_RW_LOCKING to be offered by the generic lock debugging
+code. Otherwise only CONFIG_PROVE_MUTEX_LOCKING and
+CONFIG_PROVE_RWSEM_LOCKING will be offered on an architecture - these
+are locking APIs that are not used in IRQ context. (the one exception
+for rwsems is worked around)
+
+Architecture support for this is certainly not in the "trivial"
+category, because lots of lowlevel assembly code deal with irq-flags
+state changes. But an architecture can be irq-flags-tracing enabled in a
+rather straightforward and risk-free manner.
+
+Architectures that want to support this need to do a couple of
+code-organizational changes first:
+
+- add and enable TRACE_IRQFLAGS_SUPPORT in their arch level Kconfig file
+
+and then a couple of functional changes are needed as well to implement
+irq-flags-tracing support:
+
+- in lowlevel entry code add (build-conditional) calls to the
+  trace_hardirqs_off()/trace_hardirqs_on() functions. The lock validator
+  closely guards whether the 'real' irq-flags matches the 'virtual'
+  irq-flags state, and complains loudly (and turns itself off) if the
+  two do not match. Usually most of the time for arch support for
+  irq-flags-tracing is spent in this state: look at the lockdep
+  complaint, try to figure out the assembly code we did not cover yet,
+  fix and repeat. Once the system has booted up and works without a
+  lockdep complaint in the irq-flags-tracing functions arch support is
+  complete.
+- if the architecture has non-maskable interrupts then those need to be
+  excluded from the irq-tracing [and lock validation] mechanism via
+  lockdep_off()/lockdep_on().
+
+In general there is no risk from having an incomplete irq-flags-tracing
+implementation in an architecture: lockdep will detect that and will
+turn itself off. I.e. the lock validator will still be reliable. There
+should be no crashes due to irq-tracing bugs. (except if the assembly
+changes break other code by modifying conditions or registers that
+shouldn't be)
+