On Fri, 2005-12-16 at 23:13 +0000, David Howells wrote: > The attached patch introduces a simple mutex implementation as an alternative > to the usual semaphore implementation where simple mutex functionality is all > that is required. > > This is useful in two ways: > > (1) A number of archs only provide very simple atomic instructions (such as > XCHG on i386, TAS on M68K, SWAP on FRV) which aren't sufficient to > implement full semaphore support directly. Instead spinlocks must be > employed to implement fuller functionality. > > (2) This makes it more obvious that a mutex is a mutex and restricts the > capabilites to make it more easier to debug. > > This patch set does the following: > > (1) Renames DECLARE_MUTEX and DECLARE_MUTEX_LOCKED to be DECLARE_SEM_MUTEX > and > DECLARE_SEM_MUTEX_LOCKED for counting semaphores. >
Could we really get rid of that "MUTEX" part. A counting semaphore is _not_ a mutex, although a mutex _is_ a counting semaphore. As is a Jack Russell is a dog, but a dog is not a Jack Russell. What's the reason not to just use DECLARE_SEM and DECLARE_SEM_LOCKED? -- Steve
