Re: [PATCH 4/6] Replace inode flush semaphore with a completion

[Daniel Walker <dwalker@mvista.com>]

On Fri, 2008-06-27 at 18:44 +1000, Dave Chinner wrote:
> Use the new completion flush code to implement the inode
> flush lock. Removes one of the final users of semaphores
> in the XFS code base.
> 
> Version 2:
> o make flock functions static inlines
> o use new completion interfaces

I was looking over this lock in XFS .. The iflock/ifunlock seem to be
very much like mutexes in most of the calling locations. Where the lock
happens at the start, and the unlock happens when the function calls
bottom out. It seems like a better way to go would be to change from,

xfs_ilock(uqp, XFS_ILOCK_EXCL);
xfs_iflock(uqp);
error = xfs_iflush(uqp, XFS_IFLUSH_SYNC);

Where xfs_iflush eventually does the unlock to,

xfs_ilock(uqp, XFS_ILOCK_EXCL);
xfs_iflock(uqp);
error = xfs_iflush(uqp, XFS_IFLUSH_SYNC);
xfs_ifunlock(uqp);

And remove the unlocking from inside xfs_iflush(). Then use a flag to
indicate that the flush is in progress, and a
completion/wait_for_completion when another thread needs to wait on the
flush to complete if it's an async flush.

That seems vastly more complex than your current patch, but I think it
will be much cleaner ..

Daniel