Commit e99efa8a authored by Timur Tabi's avatar Timur Tabi Committed by Greg Kroah-Hartman
Browse files

docs: debugfs: do not recommend debugfs_remove_recursive 



Update the debugfs documentation to indicate that debugfs_remove()
should be used to clean up debugfs entries.

In commit a3d1e7eb ("simple_recursive_removal(): kernel-side rm -rf
for ramfs-style filesystems"), function debugfs_remove_recursive()
was made into an alias for debugfs_remove():

    #define debugfs_remove_recursive debugfs_remove

Therefore, drivers should just use debugfs_remove() going forward.

Signed-off-by: default avatarTimur Tabi <ttabi@nvidia.com>
Link: https://lore.kernel.org/r/20250429173958.3973958-1-ttabi@nvidia.com


Signed-off-by: default avatarGreg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@linuxfoundation.org>
parent 0e4965c8

Documentation/filesystems/debugfs.rst

+6 −13
Original line number Diff line number Diff line
@@ -229,22 +229,15 @@ module is unloaded without explicitly removing debugfs entries, the result 
will be a lot of stale pointers and no end of highly antisocial behavior.

So all debugfs users - at least those which can be built as modules - must

be prepared to remove all files and directories they create there.  A file

can be removed with::

or directory can be removed with::



    void debugfs_remove(struct dentry *dentry);



The dentry value can be NULL or an error value, in which case nothing will

be removed.



Once upon a time, debugfs users were required to remember the dentry

pointer for every debugfs file they created so that all files could be

cleaned up.  We live in more civilized times now, though, and debugfs users

can call::



    void debugfs_remove_recursive(struct dentry *dentry);



If this function is passed a pointer for the dentry corresponding to the

top-level directory, the entire hierarchy below that directory will be

removed.

be removed.  Note that this function will recursively remove all files and

directories underneath it.  Previously, debugfs_remove_recursive() was used

to perform that task, but this function is now just an alias to

debugfs_remove().  debugfs_remove_recursive() should be considered

deprecated.



.. [1] http://lwn.net/Articles/309298/

Documentation/process/debugging/driver_development_debugging_guide.rst

+1 −1
Original line number Diff line number Diff line
@@ -155,7 +155,7 @@ The general idea is: 
    ``my_variable``



- Clean up the directory when removing the device

  (``debugfs_remove_recursive(parent);``)

  (``debugfs_remove(parent);``)



For the full documentation see :doc:`/filesystems/debugfs`.