[Query] tick-oneshot: Why do we need to disable interrupts for reading tick_cpu_device.mode

Hi Thomas,

I found this piece of code in tick-oneshot.c:

+int tick_oneshot_mode_active(void) +{ + unsigned long flags; + int ret; + + local_irq_save(flags); + ret = __get_cpu_var(tick_cpu_device).mode == TICKDEV_MODE_ONESHOT; + local_irq_restore(flags); + + return ret; +}

Why do we need local_irq_save/restore() here for just reading value of this variable? Can these be dropped? If yes, I would do that as part of my cleanup series around tick stuff.

-- viresh