kthread_exit(9) unexpectedness

[Julian Elischer]

Lawrence Stewart wrote:

> I'm not sure I'm clear on why the wakeup behaviour is part of the KPI 
> though. The documented behaviour in the 7.x kthread(9) man page is that 
> it calls wakeup() on the "thread handle". So the documented behaviour is 
> the intuitively correct one. The actual behaviour is "wrong", although 
> historically consistent.
AH

I thought you said the documentation for kthread didn't mention teh 
wakeup..
   so, we should probably MFC the fix


[...]

>>
>> which one would you change?
> 
> heh, good question.
> 
> On the one hand we have the intuitively correct behaviour in 8.x, 
> although the 8.x kthread_exit() behaviour with respect to wakeup() is 
> not documented at all in the kthread(9) man page.

patch suggested :-)

> 
> On the other, we have the 7.x documented behaviour which is correct, but 
> the actual behaviour of the code (which is historically consistent) is 
> incorrect and at odds with the 8.x behaviour.

in 7.x nearly everything uses kproc... so we could probably safely 
change it now.

> 
> I'm playing devil's advocate here as now I'm curious whether this issue 
> is really considered part of the KPI or not. If the actual behaviour is 
> what's important, then we obviously can't make the change in 7.x. If the 
> documented behaviour is what we are supposed to be honoring, then 
> technically the change could be made, no?
> 
> Devil's advocate musings aside, my personal feelings are that we should 
> be aiming for intuitive correctness in the KPI i.e. leaving the 8.x code 
> as it is makes sense. Even though I feel the wakeup() behaviour is not 
> technically part of the KPI in 7.x, I don't think we should change the 
> code.
> 
> Therefore I would propose some improvements to both the 7.x and 8.x 
> kthread(9) man pages which clearly document the actual behaviour and 
> subtle differences between 7.x and 8.x.
> 
> I also suspect an entry in UPDATING should be added close to the 
> existing 20071020 entry that retrospectively discusses the switch and 
> the subtle difference in kthread_exit() behaviour.
> 
> Finally, mentioning that the value of __FreeBSD_version can be checked 
> against 800002 using an #ifdef test to conditionally detect which 
> behaviour should be used would also be a good idea.
> 
> The above changes should equip developers with all the info needed to 
> maintain code that crosses the 7.x/8.x gap with minimal loss in hair.

from MEMORY the wakeup and sleep are both done inside our own
functions and the user is not expected to do them himself.
so as long as we fix it on both sides....
(I may be wrong on that, I  haven't looked at the code but just 
memories..)


> 
> Cheers,
> Lawrence