Re: [PATCH 2/7] mm/pagewalk: replace mm_walk->skip with more general mm_walk->control

From: Dave Hansen
Date: Mon Jun 09 2014 - 16:01:50 EST


On 06/06/2014 03:58 PM, Naoya Horiguchi wrote:
> +enum mm_walk_control {
> + PTWALK_NEXT = 0, /* Go to the next entry in the same level or
> + * the next vma. This is default behavior. */
> + PTWALK_DOWN, /* Go down to lower level */
> + PTWALK_BREAK, /* Break current loop and continue from the
> + * next loop */
> +};

I think this is a bad idea.

The page walker should be for the common cases of walking page tables,
and it should be simple. It *HAS* to be better (shorter/faster) than if
someone was to just open-code a page table walk, or it's not really useful.

The only place this is used is in the ppc walker, and it saves a single
line of code, but requires some comments to explain what is going on:

arch/powerpc/mm/subpage-prot.c | 12 ++++++++----
1 file changed, 8 insertions(+), 4 deletions(-)

So, it adds infrastructure, but saves a single line of code. Seems like
a bad trade off to me. :(
--
To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in
the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/