should failed calls to device_register() always call put_device()?

[Robert P. J. Day]

  from drivers/base/core.c, we have the fairly unambiguous advice:

* NOTE: _Never_ directly free @dev after calling this function, even
* if it returned an error! Always use put_device() to give up the
* reference initialized in this function instead.
*/
int device_register(struct device *dev)
{
        device_initialize(dev);
        return device_add(dev);
}

  and yet, there appears to be driver code that does exactly that,
such as this snippet from drivers/w1/w1_int.c (line 86):

	... snip ...
        err = device_register(&dev->dev);
        if (err) {
                printk(KERN_ERR "Failed to register master device. err=%d\n", err);
                memset(dev, 0, sizeof(struct w1_master));
                kfree(dev);
                dev = NULL;
        }

        return dev;

  isn't the above doing just that -- directly freeing the dev
structure without first calling put_device()?  or am i misreading
something?

rday

-- 

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Robert P. J. Day                                 Ottawa, Ontario, CANADA
                        http://crashcourse.ca

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