Re: [PATCH] simplify update_times (avoid jiffies/jiffies_64 aliasing problem)

[Atsushi Nemoto <anemo@mba.ocn.ne.jp>]

>>>>> On Sun, 5 Mar 2006 10:13:56 +1100, Paul Mackerras <paulus@samba.org> said:
paul> I think the thing that makes most sense is:

paul> #define jiffies ((unsigned long) jiffies_64)

paul> and fix the few drivers that use `jiffies' as a local variable.
paul> No-one should be trying to write to jiffies, and the compiler
paul> will do the right thing for reads of jiffies on 32-bit platforms
paul> (it does on ppc32 at least).

I think making jiffies a non l-value is good, but this drops volatile
attribute from jiffies (since jiffies_64 is not volatile).  It might
break some codes which do polling on jiffies.

Something like this would be better?

#if defined(__BIG_ENDIAN) && BITS_PER_LONG == 32
#define jiffies (*((const volatile unsigned long *)&jiffies_64 + 1))
#else
#define jiffies (*(const volatile unsigned long *)&jiffies_64)
#endif

And if we do not want to depend on -fno-strict-aliasing, the union
would be The Only Neat Thing to Do.

---
Atsushi Nemoto
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