locking/mutexes: Documentation update/rewrite
Our mutexes have gone a long ways since the original
implementation back in 2005/2006. However, the mutex-design.txt
document is still stuck in the past, to the point where most of
the information there is practically useless and, more
important, simply incorrect. This patch pretty much rewrites it
to resemble what we have nowadays.
Since regular semaphores are almost much extinct in the kernel
(most users now rely on mutexes or rwsems), it no longer makes
sense to have such a close comparison, which was copied from
most of the cover letter when Ingo introduced the generic mutex
subsystem.
Note that ww_mutexes are intentionally left out, leaving things
as generic as possible.
Signed-off-by: Davidlohr Bueso <davidlohr@hp.com>
Cc: tim.c.chen@linux.intel.com
Cc: paulmck@linux.vnet.ibm.com
Cc: waiman.long@hp.com
Cc: jason.low2@hp.com
Cc: aswin@hp.com
Cc: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
Cc: Peter Zijlstra <peterz@infradead.org>
Link: http://lkml.kernel.org/r/1401338203.2618.11.camel@buesod1.americas.hpqcorp.net
Signed-off-by: Ingo Molnar <mingo@kernel.org>
1 file changed