Re: [PATCH v11 7/7] sched: Split scheduler and execution contexts

[Peter Zijlstra]

Sorry for the delay, I need the earth to stop spinning so goddamn fast
:-) 36 hours days ftw or so... Oh wait, that'd mean other people also
increase the amount of crap they send my way, don't it?

Damn..

On Wed, Jul 31, 2024 at 11:11:45AM +0200, Juri Lelli wrote:
> Hi John,
> 
> On 12/07/24 12:10, John Stultz wrote:
> > On Fri, Jul 12, 2024 at 8:02 AM Peter Zijlstra <peterz@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> > >
> > > On Tue, Jul 09, 2024 at 01:31:50PM -0700, John Stultz wrote:
> > > > From: Peter Zijlstra <peterz@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> > > >
> > > > Let's define the scheduling context as all the scheduler state
> > > > in task_struct for the task selected to run, and the execution
> > > > context as all state required to actually run the task.
> > > >
> > > > Currently both are intertwined in task_struct. We want to
> > > > logically split these such that we can use the scheduling
> > > > context of the task selected to be scheduled, but use the
> > > > execution context of a different task to actually be run.
> > > >
> > > > To this purpose, introduce rq_selected() macro to point to the
> > > > task_struct selected from the runqueue by the scheduler, and
> > > > will be used for scheduler state, and preserve rq->curr to
> > > > indicate the execution context of the task that will actually be
> > > > run.
> > >
> > > > * Swapped proxy for selected for clarity
> > >
> > > I'm not loving this naming...  what does selected even mean? What was
> > > wrong with proxy? -- (did we have this conversation before?)
> > 
> > So yeah, this came up earlier:
> > https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/CANDhNCr3acrEpBYd2LVkY3At=HCDZxGWqbMMwzVJ-Mn--dv3DA@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx/
> > 
> > My big concern is that the way proxy was used early in the series
> > seemed to be inverted from how the term is commonly used.
> > 
> > A proxy is one who takes an action on behalf of someone else.

Ah, I see your confusion.

> > In this case we have a blocked task that was picked to run, but then
> > we run another task in its place. Intuitively, this makes the proxy
> > the one that actually runs, not the one that was picked. But the
> > earliest versions of the patch had this flipped, and caused lots of
> > conceptual confusion in the discussions I had with folks about what
> > the patch was doing (as well as my own confusion initially working on
> > the patch).
> 
> I don't think I have strong preferences either way, but I actually
> considered the proxy to be the blocked donor (the one picked by the
> scheduler to run), as it makes the owner use its properties, acting as a
> proxy for the owner.

This. But I suspect we both suffer from not being native English
speakers.

Would 'donor' work in this case?

Then the donor gets all the accounting done on it, while we execute
curr.