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author | Daniel Baumann <daniel.baumann@progress-linux.org> | 2024-04-27 10:05:51 +0000 |
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committer | Daniel Baumann <daniel.baumann@progress-linux.org> | 2024-04-27 10:05:51 +0000 |
commit | 5d1646d90e1f2cceb9f0828f4b28318cd0ec7744 (patch) | |
tree | a94efe259b9009378be6d90eb30d2b019d95c194 /Documentation/driver-api/driver-model/design-patterns.rst | |
parent | Initial commit. (diff) | |
download | linux-430c2fc249ea5c0536abd21c23382884005c9093.tar.xz linux-430c2fc249ea5c0536abd21c23382884005c9093.zip |
Adding upstream version 5.10.209.upstream/5.10.209upstream
Signed-off-by: Daniel Baumann <daniel.baumann@progress-linux.org>
Diffstat (limited to 'Documentation/driver-api/driver-model/design-patterns.rst')
-rw-r--r-- | Documentation/driver-api/driver-model/design-patterns.rst | 116 |
1 files changed, 116 insertions, 0 deletions
diff --git a/Documentation/driver-api/driver-model/design-patterns.rst b/Documentation/driver-api/driver-model/design-patterns.rst new file mode 100644 index 000000000..41eb8f41f --- /dev/null +++ b/Documentation/driver-api/driver-model/design-patterns.rst @@ -0,0 +1,116 @@ +============================= +Device Driver Design Patterns +============================= + +This document describes a few common design patterns found in device drivers. +It is likely that subsystem maintainers will ask driver developers to +conform to these design patterns. + +1. State Container +2. container_of() + + +1. State Container +~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ + +While the kernel contains a few device drivers that assume that they will +only be probed() once on a certain system (singletons), it is custom to assume +that the device the driver binds to will appear in several instances. This +means that the probe() function and all callbacks need to be reentrant. + +The most common way to achieve this is to use the state container design +pattern. It usually has this form:: + + struct foo { + spinlock_t lock; /* Example member */ + (...) + }; + + static int foo_probe(...) + { + struct foo *foo; + + foo = devm_kzalloc(dev, sizeof(*foo), GFP_KERNEL); + if (!foo) + return -ENOMEM; + spin_lock_init(&foo->lock); + (...) + } + +This will create an instance of struct foo in memory every time probe() is +called. This is our state container for this instance of the device driver. +Of course it is then necessary to always pass this instance of the +state around to all functions that need access to the state and its members. + +For example, if the driver is registering an interrupt handler, you would +pass around a pointer to struct foo like this:: + + static irqreturn_t foo_handler(int irq, void *arg) + { + struct foo *foo = arg; + (...) + } + + static int foo_probe(...) + { + struct foo *foo; + + (...) + ret = request_irq(irq, foo_handler, 0, "foo", foo); + } + +This way you always get a pointer back to the correct instance of foo in +your interrupt handler. + + +2. container_of() +~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ + +Continuing on the above example we add an offloaded work:: + + struct foo { + spinlock_t lock; + struct workqueue_struct *wq; + struct work_struct offload; + (...) + }; + + static void foo_work(struct work_struct *work) + { + struct foo *foo = container_of(work, struct foo, offload); + + (...) + } + + static irqreturn_t foo_handler(int irq, void *arg) + { + struct foo *foo = arg; + + queue_work(foo->wq, &foo->offload); + (...) + } + + static int foo_probe(...) + { + struct foo *foo; + + foo->wq = create_singlethread_workqueue("foo-wq"); + INIT_WORK(&foo->offload, foo_work); + (...) + } + +The design pattern is the same for an hrtimer or something similar that will +return a single argument which is a pointer to a struct member in the +callback. + +container_of() is a macro defined in <linux/kernel.h> + +What container_of() does is to obtain a pointer to the containing struct from +a pointer to a member by a simple subtraction using the offsetof() macro from +standard C, which allows something similar to object oriented behaviours. +Notice that the contained member must not be a pointer, but an actual member +for this to work. + +We can see here that we avoid having global pointers to our struct foo * +instance this way, while still keeping the number of parameters passed to the +work function to a single pointer. |