Re: [PATCH 02/16] mm: introduce leaf entry type and use to simplify leaf entry logic

[Lorenzo Stoakes]

On Wed, Nov 05, 2025 at 10:15:51PM +0100, David Hildenbrand (Red Hat) wrote:
> On 05.11.25 22:08, Lorenzo Stoakes wrote:
> > On Wed, Nov 05, 2025 at 09:11:45PM +0100, David Hildenbrand (Red Hat) wrote:
> > > On 05.11.25 21:05, Lorenzo Stoakes wrote:
> > > > On Wed, Nov 05, 2025 at 03:01:00PM -0500, Gregory Price wrote:
> > > > > On Wed, Nov 05, 2025 at 07:52:36PM +0000, Lorenzo Stoakes wrote:
> > > > > > On Wed, Nov 05, 2025 at 02:25:34PM -0500, Gregory Price wrote:
> > > > > > > On Wed, Nov 05, 2025 at 07:06:11PM +0000, Matthew Wilcox wrote:
> > > > > > I thought about doing this but it doesn't really work as the type is
> > > > > > _abstracted_ from the architecture-specific value, _and_ we use what is
> > > > > > currently the swp_type field to identify what this is.
> > > > > >
> > > > > > So we would lose the architecture-specific information that any 'hardware leaf'
> > > > > > entry would require and not be able to reliably identify it without losing bits.
> > > > > >
> > > > > > Trying to preserve the value _and_ correctly identify it as a present entry
> > > > > > would be difficult.
> > > > > >
> > > > > > And I _really_ didn't want to go on a deep dive through all the architectures to
> > > > > > see if we could encode it differently to allow for this.
> > > > > >
> > > > > > Rather I think it's better to differentiate between s/w + h/w leaf entries.
> > > > > >
> > > > >
> > > > > Reasonable - names are hard, but just about anything will be better than swp_entry.
> > > > >
> > > > > SWE / sw_entry seems perfectly reasonable.
> > > >
> > > > I'm not a lover of 'sw' in there it's just... eye-stabby. Is that a word?
> > > >
> > > > I am quite fond of my suggested soft_leaf_t, softleaf_xxx()
> > >
> > > We do have soft_dirty.
> > >
> > > It will get interesting with pte_swp_soft_dirty() :)
> >
> > Hmm but that's literally a swap entry, and is used against an actual PTE entry
> > not an abstracted s/w leaf entry so I doubt that'd require renaming on any
> > level.
>
> It's used on migration entries as well. Just like pte_swp_uffd_wp().
>
> So, it's ... tricky :)
>
> But maybe I am missing your point (my brain is exhausted from uffd code)

We'd either not rename it or rename it to something like pte_is_uffd_wp(). So
it's not even so relevant.

We'd probably call that something like pte_is_soft_dirty() in the soft dirty
case. The 'swp' part of that is pretty redundant.

If people were insistent on having softleaf in there we could call it
pte_softleaf_is_soft_dirty() which isn't qutie so bad. But I'd not want to put
softleaf in there anyway.

sw_entry or sw_leaf or sw_leaf_entry would all have the same weirdness.

I want it to be something that is readable + not hideous to look at but still
clear as to what it's referring too. Softleaf covers all of that off... :)