Detecting if a Semaphore is Taken in FreeRTOS
It’s not clear how to tell if a semaphore is taken in FreeRTOS, but it’s critical in troubleshooting some problems.
In FreeRTOS a semaphore is a special type of queue. The queue entries have a length of 0. Every time the semaphore is taken, an item is removed from the queue. When the semaphore is given, we add an item to the queue. Now that we know that, we just need to find where that is in our memory structure. Going down the typedef rabbit hole, a SemaphoreHandle_t is really a pointer to a QueueDefinition. Here’s what a QueueDefinition is (from FreeRTOS 10.4):
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 | /* * Definition of the queue used by the scheduler. * Items are queued by copy, not reference. See the following link for the * rationale: https://www.FreeRTOS.org/Embedded-RTOS-Queues.html */ typedef struct QueueDefinition /* The old naming convention is used to prevent breaking kernel aware debuggers. */ { int8_t * pcHead; /*< Points to the beginning of the queue storage area. */ int8_t * pcWriteTo; /*< Points to the free next place in the storage area. */ union { QueuePointers_t xQueue; /*< Data required exclusively when this structure is used as a queue. */ SemaphoreData_t xSemaphore; /*< Data required exclusively when this structure is used as a semaphore. */ } u; List_t xTasksWaitingToSend; /*< List of tasks that are blocked waiting to post onto this queue. Stored in priority order. */ List_t xTasksWaitingToReceive; /*< List of tasks that are blocked waiting to read from this queue. Stored in priority order. */ volatile UBaseType_t uxMessagesWaiting; /*< The number of items currently in the queue. */ UBaseType_t uxLength; /*< The length of the queue defined as the number of items it will hold, not the number of bytes. */ UBaseType_t uxItemSize; /*< The size of each items that the queue will hold. */ volatile int8_t cRxLock; /*< Stores the number of items received from the queue (removed from the queue) while the queue was locked. Set to queueUNLOCKED when the queue is not locked. */ volatile int8_t cTxLock; /*< Stores the number of items transmitted to the queue (added to the queue) while the queue was locked. Set to queueUNLOCKED when the queue is not locked. */ #if ( ( configSUPPORT_STATIC_ALLOCATION == 1 ) && ( configSUPPORT_DYNAMIC_ALLOCATION == 1 ) ) uint8_t ucStaticallyAllocated; /*< Set to pdTRUE if the memory used by the queue was statically allocated to ensure no attempt is made to free the memory. */ #endif #if ( configUSE_QUEUE_SETS == 1 ) struct QueueDefinition * pxQueueSetContainer; #endif #if ( configUSE_TRACE_FACILITY == 1 ) UBaseType_t uxQueueNumber; uint8_t ucQueueType; #endif } xQUEUE; /* The old xQUEUE name is maintained above then typedefed to the new Queue_t * name below to enable the use of older kernel aware debuggers. */ typedef xQUEUE Queue_t; /** * Type by which queues are referenced. For example, a call to xQueueCreate() * returns an QueueHandle_t variable that can then be used as a parameter to * xQueueSend(), xQueueReceive(), etc. */ struct QueueDefinition; /* Using old naming convention so as not to break kernel aware debuggers. */ typedef struct QueueDefinition * QueueHandle_t; typedef QueueHandle_t SemaphoreHandle_t; |
Now that we know this, we can easily put a watch on a semaphore by doing
When the semaphore is initialized the value is 0. This is why we give the semaphore after creation.
We hope this helps you in your software development journey.
