Re: [Ksummit-discuss] [TECH TOPIC] Fix devm_kzalloc, its users, or both

[Takashi Iwai <tiwai@suse.de>]

On Sun, 02 Aug 2015 16:30:25 +0200,
Russell King - ARM Linux wrote:
> 
> We have lots of drivers trying to solve this issue of private data in
> their own ways.  Some use a kref, others use other methods.  Isn't it
> about time we had some kind of unification here to ease this burden on
> driver authors?
> 
> We can have an argument about whether kernel driver authors should know
> about the fine details of lifetime issues which many kernel subsystem
> maintainers themselves struggle to grasp, and whether they should therefore
> be coding for the kernel at all, or whether we should be making it easy
> for driver authors to get things right.
> 
> Personally, I'd prefer the latter - the simpler the interfaces, the easier
> it is for everyone to get stuff correct, and the less obscure bugs there
> will be.

I bet majority of maintainers would love the latter, too.
After all, the simplicity is the reason why devm_* got more
attraction.


thanks,

Takashi