Re: [PATCH]: fix 32bits integer overflow in loops_per_jiffy calculation

[Gabriel Paubert]

Benjamin Herrenschmidt wrote:
>>Well, first on sane archs which have an easily accessible, fixed
>>frequency time counter, loops_per_jiffy should never have existed :-)
>>
>>Second, putting this code there means that one day somebody will
>>inevitably try to use it outside of its domain of operation (like it
>>happened for div64 a few months ago when I pointed out that it would not
>>work for divisors above 65535 or so).
> 
> 
> Well... it's clearly located inside kernel/cpufreq.c, so there is
> little risk, though it may be worth a big bold comment

Hmm, in my experience people hardly ever read detailed comments even 
when they are well-written. Perhaps if you called the function 
imprecise_scale or coarse_scale, it might ring a bell.

Besides that functions should do one thing and do that *well*[1]. Well, 
I'm usually not too dogmatic, but this function breaks the second rule
beyond what I find acceptable.

>>In this case a generic scaling function, while not a standard libgcc/C
>>library feature has potentially more applications than this simple 
>>cpufreq approximation. But I don't see very much the need for scaling a 
>>long (64 bit on 64 bit archs) value, 32 bit would be sufficient.
> 
> 
> Well... if you can write one, go on then ;) In my case, I'm happy
> with Yoann implementation for cpufreq right now. Though I agree that
> could ultimately be moved to arch code.

Ok, I'll give it a try this week-end (PPC, i386 and all 64 bit should 
archs should be trivial).

	Gabriel.

[1] Documentation/CodingStyle, which also claims that functions should 
be short and *sweet*. Well, I found the patch far too bitter ;-).