Re: Extend clear_page by an order parameter

[Paul Mackerras]

Christoph Lameter writes:

> I had the name "zero_page" in V1 and V2 of the patch where it was
> separate. Then someone complained about code duplication.

Well, if you duplicated each arch's clear_page implementation in
zero_page, then yes, that would be unnecessary code duplication.  I
would suggest that for architectures where the clear_page
implementation can easily be extended, rename it to clear_page_order
(or something) and #define clear_page(x) to be clear_page_order(x, 0).
For architectures where it can't, leave clear_page as clear_page and
define clear_page_order as an inline function that calls clear_page in
a loop.

> clear_page is called clear_page because it clears one page of *any* order
> not just higher orders. zero-order pages are not segregated nor are they
> intrisincally better just because they contain more memory ;-).

You have missed my point, which was about address constraints, not a
distinction between zero-order pages and higher-order pages.

Anyway, I remain of the opinion that your naming is inconsistent with
the naming of other functions that deal with zero-order and
higher-order pages, such as get_free_pages, alloc_pages, free_pages,
etc., and that your patch is unnecessarily intrusive.  I guess it's up
to Andrew to decide which way we go.

Paul.
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