Re: [PATCH 2/2] kcov: load acquire coverage count in user-space code

[Marco Elver <elver@google.com>]

On Mon, 28 Jul 2025 at 20:43, Soham Bagchi <soham.bagchi@utah.edu> wrote:
>
> Updating the KCOV documentation to use a load-acquire
> operation for the first element of the shared memory
> buffer between kernel-space and user-space.
>
> The load-acquire pairs with the write memory barrier
> used in kcov_move_area()
>
> Signed-off-by: Soham Bagchi <soham.bagchi@utah.edu>
> ---
>  Documentation/dev-tools/kcov.rst | 7 ++++++-
>  1 file changed, 6 insertions(+), 1 deletion(-)
>
> diff --git a/Documentation/dev-tools/kcov.rst b/Documentation/dev-tools/kcov.rst
> index 6611434e2dd..46450fb46fe 100644
> --- a/Documentation/dev-tools/kcov.rst
> +++ b/Documentation/dev-tools/kcov.rst
> @@ -287,6 +287,11 @@ handle instance id.
>  The following program demonstrates using KCOV to collect coverage from both
>  local tasks spawned by the process and the global task that handles USB bus #1:
>
> +The user-space code for KCOV should also use an acquire to fetch the count
> +of coverage entries in the shared buffer. This acquire pairs with the
> +corresponding write memory barrier (smp_wmb()) on the kernel-side in
> +kcov_move_area().
> +

This new paragraph is misplaced.
You've added it after the "... handles USB bus #1:" part which clearly
should be right before the code (note the colon).

Why not add what you wrote here as a block-comment (similar in style
to comment above the sleep()) right above the __atomic_load_n below? I
think those details probably don't quite belong into the high level
text, but the detailed code example.

>  .. code-block:: c
>
>      /* Same includes and defines as above. */
> @@ -361,7 +366,7 @@ local tasks spawned by the process and the global task that handles USB bus #1:
>          */
>         sleep(2);
>
> -       n = __atomic_load_n(&cover[0], __ATOMIC_RELAXED);
> +       n = __atomic_load_n(&cover[0], __ATOMIC_ACQUIRE);
>         for (i = 0; i < n; i++)
>                 printf("0x%lx\n", cover[i + 1]);
>         if (ioctl(fd, KCOV_DISABLE, 0))
> --
> 2.34.1
>