On Wednesday 18 January 2012 04:02:32 Srikar Dronamraju wrote:
> >   Can we use existing SET_IP() instead of set_instruction_pointer() ?
> 
> Oleg had already commented about this in one his uprobes reviews.
> 
> The GET_IP/SET_IP available in include/asm-generic/ptrace.h doesnt work
> on all archs. Atleast it doesnt work on powerpc when I tried it.

so migrate the arches you need over to it.

> Also most archs define instruction_pointer(). So I thought (rather Peter
> Zijlstra suggested the name set_instruction_pointer())
> set_instruction_pointer was a better bet than SET_IP. I

asm-generic/ptrace.h already has instruction_pointer_set()

> Also I dont see any usage for SET_IP/GET_IP.

i think you mean "users" here ?  the usage should be fairly obvious.  both 
macros are used by asm-generic/ptrace.h internally, but (currently) rarely 
defined by arches themselves (by design).  the funcs that are based on these 
GET/SET helpers though do get used in many places.

simply grep arch/*/include/asm/ptrace.h

> May be we should have something like this in
> include/asm-generic/ptrace.h
> 
> #ifdef instruction_pointer
> #define GET_IP(regs)		(instruction_pointer(regs))
> #define set_instruction_pointer(regs, val) (instruction_pointer(regs) =
> (val))
> #define SET_IP(regs, val)	(set_instruction_pointer(regs,val))
> #endif
> 

what you propose here won't work on all arches which is the whole point of 
{G,S}ET_IP in the first place.  i proposed a similar idea before and was shot 
down for exactly that reason.  look at ia64 for an obvious example.

> or should we do away with GET_IP/SET_IP esp since there are no many
> users?

no, the point is to migrate to asm-generic/ptrace.h, not away from it.
-mike