There are many functions that take ownership of the I/O buffer they
are passed as a parameter. The caller should not retain a pointer to
the I/O buffer. Use iob_disown() to automatically nullify the
caller's pointer, e.g.:
xfer_deliver_iob ( xfer, iob_disown ( iobuf ) );
This will ensure that iobuf is set to NULL for any code after the call
to xfer_deliver_iob().
iob_disown() is currently used only in places where it simplifies the
code, by avoiding an extra line explicitly setting the I/O buffer
pointer to NULL. It should ideally be used with each call to any
function that takes ownership of an I/O buffer. (The SSA
optimisations will ensure that use of iob_disown() gets optimised away
in cases where the caller makes no further use of the I/O buffer
pointer anyway.)
If gcc ever introduces an __attribute__((free)), indicating that use
of a function argument after a function call should generate a
warning, then we should use this to identify all applicable function
call sites, and add iob_disown() as necessary.
names.
Add "dev" pointer in struct net_device to tie network interfaces back to a
hardware device.
Force natural alignment of data types in __table() macros. This seems to
prevent gcc from taking the unilateral decision to occasionally increase
their alignment (which screws up the table packing).
defined in vsprintf.h. (This may change, since vsprintf.h is a
non-standard name, but for now it's the one to use.)
There should be no need to include vsprintf.h just for DBG() statements,
since include/compiler.h forces it in for a debug build anyway.
Kill off the static single net device and move to proper dynamic
registration (which we need with the new device model).
Break the (flawed) assumption that all network-layer protocols can use
ARP; such network-layer protocols (i.e. IPv4) must now register as an ARP
protocol using ARP_NET_PROTOCOL() and provide a single method for checking
the existence of a local network-layer address.
take ownership of the packet, rather than doing so only if they return
success. This breaks semantic compatibility with Linux's
hard_start_xmit() method, but means that we don't have to worry so much
about error cases.
Split mechanism of processing received packets (net_rx_process()) out
from policy (net_step()), preparatory to putting net_step() in a separate
object.
implementation allows for only one, and does so without compromising on
the efficiency of static allocation).
Link-layer protocols are cleanly separated from the device drivers.
Network-layer protocols are cleanly separated from individual network
devices.
Link-layer and network-layer protocols are cleanly separated from each
other.