On Thu, Oct 13, 2016 at 01:41:11PM -0700, Vineeth Remanan Pillai wrote:Unfortunately, I also do not have enough context about the customer
Yes, the use case is out-of-tree and the code snippet above depicts the use... and in that thread I have asked for details and got no reply whatsoever.
.
Since kern_path_locked is also not exported, out-of-tree code used kern_path
for the existence check for directories.
One reference about this issue can be seen here.
http://www.gossamer-threads.com/lists/linux/kernel/2459690?do=post_view_flat#2459690
We also have a customer who complained about this functionality change.In principle, I have no strong objections against exporting kern_path_locked,
I understand that there has been no API promises been made to this API. But
since this is an
exported function, the change in function could cause break in out-of-tree
kernel code. I will
rephrase the commit message to say "change in functionality" instead of
regression
provided it really matches what they (whoever they are) need. I'm still
curious about the context, though - what is that code trying to do? Depending
on the actual stuff it wants to implement, there might be better primitives
for doing that *and* there might be something worth adding and exporting
that would be a better match.
It's not that kern_path_locked() isn't a sane interface, but... using it
might be a sign of trying to work around something missing in API. So again,
please post more details.