Re: [PATCH vfs 1/2] lib: implement ptrset

[Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>]

On Fri, 14 Nov 2014 08:12:02 -0500 Tejun Heo <tj@kernel.org> wrote:

> Hello, Andrew.
> 
> On Thu, Nov 13, 2014 at 02:40:41PM -0800, Andrew Morton wrote:
> > In that case tjpointer_add() would need to do a kmalloc() for each inode
> > which is added to the bdev/cdev, just as ptrset_add() is doing.
> > 
> > That might require a nasty preload thing.  But really, for just two
> > known callers it would be better to require the caller to create the
> > storage.
> > 
> > 
> > 	struct tjpointer *new_tpj;
> > 
> > 	new_tpj = kmalloc(...);
> > 	lock();
> > 	tjpointer_add(&my_tjp_list, new_tjp, my_pointer);
> > 	unlock();
> > 
> > Basically what I'm saying is nuke the rbtree and use lists.
> 
> Hah?  Then, each removal would be O(N) where N is the number of total
> block devices and there are cases where massive number of block
> devices exist and many are added / removed back-to-back.  I don't
> think making those operations O(N^2) is a good idea.
> 

bdev_evict_inode() walks all the inodes attached to the bdev and
unlinks them from the bdev.  That can be done with
list_for_each_safe(), just as it is (effectively) in current mainline.

IOW, all we need to do is to remove the list_head from struct inode and
create a new, separately allocated { struct list_head l; void *inode }
to point at the inode.  IOW, simply convert the intrusive list to a
nonintrusive list.


This is proving a painful way of extracting a changelog :( Perhaps I'm
still not getting it and you should have another go, this time
explaining the reasoning behind the design choices.