Re: [PATCH 02/19] dma-buf-map: Add helper to initialize second map

[Lucas De Marchi]

On Thu, Jan 27, 2022 at 08:27:11AM +0100, Christian König wrote:
> Am 26.01.22 um 21:36 schrieb Lucas De Marchi:
> > When dma_buf_map struct is passed around, it's useful to be able to
> > initialize a second map that takes care of reading/writing to an offset
> > of the original map.
> >
> > Add a helper that copies the struct and add the offset to the proper
> > address.
>
> Well what you propose here can lead to all kind of problems and is 
> rather bad design as far as I can see.
>
> The struct dma_buf_map is only to be filled in by the exporter and 
> should not be modified in this way by the importer.

humn... not sure if I was  clear. There is no importer and exporter here.
There is a role delegation on filling out and reading a buffer when
that buffer represents a struct layout.

struct bla {
	int a;
	int b;
	int c;
	struct foo foo;
	struct bar bar;
	int d;
}


This implementation allows you to have:

	fill_foo(struct dma_buf_map *bla_map) { ... }
	fill_bar(struct dma_buf_map *bla_map) { ... }

and the first thing these do is to make sure the map it's pointing to
is relative to the struct it's supposed to write/read. Otherwise you're
suggesting everything to be relative to struct bla, or to do the same
I'm doing it, but IMO more prone to error:

	struct dma_buf_map map = *bla_map;
	dma_buf_map_incr(map, offsetof(...));

IMO this construct is worse because at a point in time in the function
the map was pointing to the wrong thing the function was supposed to
read/write.

It's also useful when the function has double duty, updating a global
part of the struct and a table inside it (see example in patch 6)

thanks
Lucas De Marchi