refcount without locking?

Hello group,

I'm working on simplifying some aspects of source node tracking in pf 
and I thought that using reference counting would allow to simplify the 
code a bit by detaching the counter of states attached to a source node 
(currently pretending to be a reference counter too) from a reference 
counter (non-existent now). But I can't figure out how refcount(9) 
should be used.

The man page for refcount(9) states:

 > Note that these routines do not provide any inter-CPU
 > synchronization or data protection for managing the counter.

But most of reference counting functions use atomic operations. I 
understand that those operations will guarantee that reference 
increments and decrements will work properly over multiple threads and 
multiple CPUs or CPU cores.

How should refcount(9) be used regarding locking?

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