Re: [Qemu-devel] [PATCH] hw/arm/bcm283x: Fix crash with device_add bcm2837 on unsupported machines

[Eduardo Habkost]

On Wed, Jul 11, 2018 at 09:04:35PM +0200, Thomas Huth wrote:
> On 11.07.2018 19:21, Paolo Bonzini wrote:
> > On 10/07/2018 08:50, Peter Maydell wrote:
> >>>> Yuck. The real problem here is that we're still requiring the
> >>>> code that creates these QOM devices to manually set the parent
> >>>> in the first place. It's not surprising that we don't get it right
> >>>> (either parenting in the wrong place or not at all). I'd much
> >>>> rather see us fix that properly than keep papering over places
> >>>> where we get it wrong.
> >>> Sorry, I'm still not an expert in all this QOM stuff yet ... so what do
> >>> you exactly recommend to do instead?
> >> I'm not clear either, but I don't think that what we're
> >> currently doing can be right.
> > 
> > Well, in theory it should work...  I sent the expected flow in another 
> > email.
> 
> Something that just came to my mind:
> 
> bcm2836_init() creates the TYPE_BCM2835_PERIPHERALS object with
> object_initialize(). This creates one reference to the object already.
> Then the object is linked to its parent with
> object_property_add_child(), which creates another reference to the
> object. But where are the two references correctly destroyed again? One
> is certainly destroyed by device_unparent later, but the initial one?
> Could it be that we are simply lacking one object_unref() after the
> object_property_add_child() here?

This seems to be true, but I'm confused about the reference
counting model, here:

What exactly guarantees there will be no other references to
(e.g.) `&s->control` when `s` is freed?

We know the references added by object_initialize(),
object_property_add_child() and qdev_set_parent_bus() will be
dropped, but what about other code calling object_ref()?

-- 
Eduardo