Give brief explanations about the device-managed resources and the newly introduced snd_devm_card_new() helper.
Signed-off-by: Takashi Iwai tiwai@suse.de --- .../kernel-api/writing-an-alsa-driver.rst | 33 +++++++++++++++++++ 1 file changed, 33 insertions(+)
diff --git a/Documentation/sound/kernel-api/writing-an-alsa-driver.rst b/Documentation/sound/kernel-api/writing-an-alsa-driver.rst index 01d59b8aea92..255b7d3bebd6 100644 --- a/Documentation/sound/kernel-api/writing-an-alsa-driver.rst +++ b/Documentation/sound/kernel-api/writing-an-alsa-driver.rst @@ -4172,6 +4172,39 @@ module license as GPL, etc., otherwise the system is shown as “tainted”. MODULE_LICENSE("GPL");
+Device-Managed Resources +======================== + +In the examples above, all resources are allocated and released +manually. But human beings are lazy in nature, especially developers +are lazier. So there are some ways to automate the release part; it's +the (device-)managed resources aka devres or devm family. For +example, an object allocated via :c:func:`devm_kmalloc()` will be +freed automatically at unbinding the device. + +ALSA core provides also the device-managed helper, namely, +:c:func:`snd_devm_card_new()` for creating a card object. +Call this functions instead of the normal :c:func:`snd_card_new()`, +and you can forget the explicit :c:func:`snd_card_free()` call, as +it's called automagically at error and removal paths. + +One caveat is that the call of :c:func:`snd_card_free()` would be put +at the beginning of the call chain only after you call +:c:func:`snd_card_register()`. + +Also, the ``private_free`` callback is always called at the card free, +so be careful to put the hardware clean-up procedure in +``private_free`` callback. It might be called even before you +actually set up at an earlier error path. For avoiding such an +invalid initialization, you can set ``private_free`` callback after +:c:func:`snd_card_register()` call succeeds. + +Another thing to be remarked is that you should use device-managed +helpers for each component as much as possible once when you manage +the card in that way. Mixing up with the normal and the managed +resources may screw up the release order. + + How To Put Your Driver Into ALSA Tree =====================================