Re: [GIT PULL] notification tree - fsnotify assumes incorrectly positive parent dentry

[Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>]

On Tue, 30 Jun 2009, Jeremy Kerr wrote:
> 
> > Hmm. It does sound like a reasonable assumption, though. Maybe spufs
> > should be fixed to have an inode for all directories?
> 
> We have inodes for all directories, it's just the order which we set 
> things up. When a new 'spu context' (ie, a directory with a bunch of 
> files) is created, we add the parent dentry, populate it with files 
> (positive dentries), then instantiate the parent.
> 
> There's no specific need to do it in this order, it just makes the code 
> a little simpler - we just 'stitch the parent in' once everything else 
> has completed successfully, so less stuff to do in the error path.
> 
> > A NULL d_inode means that something is a negative dentry, and a
> > negative dentry shouldn't have children.
> 
> OK. If this is a general invariant, then I'll get a change to spufs 
> going to do the setup in the right order.

Hmm. I doubt it matters a ton, but if it's easy to change it so that it 
populates the parent inode first, I think that would be a good thing. 
Thanks,

		Linus