what should be a simple question about sysfs attributes ...

[John de la Garza]

On Fri, Jan 30, 2015 at 04:30:02AM -0800, Robert P. J. Day wrote:
> 
>   i'll try this one more time, but much more concisely. so far, i've
> seen two different ways to create a kobject's attributes and register
> callback routines for them:
> 
>   the first general way i've seen is in mm/ksm.c, where each attribute
> is enclosed in a surrounding kobj_attribute structure, which also
> contains references to *generic* show() and store() routines:
> 
> struct kobj_attribute {
>         struct attribute attr;
>         ssize_t (*show)(struct kobject *kobj, struct kobj_attribute *attr,
>                         char *buf);
>         ssize_t (*store)(struct kobject *kobj, struct kobj_attribute *attr,
>                          const char *buf, size_t count);
> };
> 
>   in mm/ksm.c file, each attribute is associated *directly* with a
> different show() and store() routine specific to that attribute. so my
> understanding is, when you try to access a ksm attribute file under
> /sys, the generic attribute object is *assumed* to be contained inside
> a kobj_attribute structure, so dereferencing to get to the show() and
> store() routine for that attribute is easy.
> 
>   is that correct? that is, the way ksm.c creates and registers
> attributes means that it is assumed "kobj_attribute" structures will
> be used as containers for generic attributes?
> 
>   the second way is in cpufreq.c, where the difference is that, rather
> than each attribute file being *directly* associated with its own pair
> of callback routines, a pair of *generic* show() and store() routines
> are defined:
> 
> static ssize_t show(struct kobject *kobj, struct attribute *attr, char *buf)
> 
> static ssize_t store(struct kobject *kobj, struct attribute *attr,
>                      const char *buf, size_t count)
> 
> and the way the attributes are registered in *that* source file:
> 
> static const struct sysfs_ops sysfs_ops = {
>         .show   = show,
>         .store  = store,
> };
> 
> static struct kobj_type ktype_cpufreq = {
>         .sysfs_ops      = &sysfs_ops,
>         .default_attrs  = default_attrs,
>         .release        = cpufreq_sysfs_release,
> };
> 
> means that, rather than dereferencing each generic attribute to an
> enclosing kobj_attribute, each attribute file reference is redirected
> to the *same* generic show() and store() callback associated with the
> ktype, at which point those two generic callbacks are responsible for
> dereferencing a generic attribute pointer to get to (in this case),
> the enclosing cpufreq-specific freq_attr structure.
> 
>   i *think* i got it right this time. comments?


If I'm understanding correctly, this is describing the same thing.

"Sometimes all that a developer wants is a way to create a simple directory
in the sysfs hierarchy, and not have to mess with the whole complication of
ksets, show and store functions, and other details.  This is the one
exception where a single kobject should be created."

from:  Documentation/kobject.txt