linux-kernel - Re: [git patches] Ocfs2 and Configfs updates for 2.6.27

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Date:	Thu, 17 Jul 2008 11:01:40 -0700 (PDT)
From:	Linus Torvalds <torvalds@...ux-foundation.org>
To:	Mark Fasheh <mfasheh@...e.com>
cc:	linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org, ocfs2-devel@....oracle.com,
	Joel Becker <joel.becker@...cle.com>,
	Andrew Morton <akpm@...ux-foundation.org>
Subject: Re: [git patches] Ocfs2 and Configfs updates for 2.6.27



On Thu, 17 Jul 2008, Mark Fasheh wrote:
> 
> The only two things that could be described as features would be:
> 
> - Joel updated configfs's ->make_item() and ->make_group() callbacks to
>   return more descriptive error types. This update is responsible for the
>  changes to drivers/net/netconsole.c and fs/dlm/config.c as shown in the diffstat.


.. I really dislike how this was done.

This commit:

11c3b79218390a139f2d474ee1e983a672d5839a ("configfs: Allow ->make_item() 
and ->make_group() to return detailed errors.")

is just ugly. Returning one value by passing a pointer to a pointer, and 
the error value by returning an 'int' errno is _not_ how we do things in 
the kernel.

No, we use error pointers. 

IOW, you should have left the calling convention for "(*make_item)()" and 
"(*make_group)()" alone, but allowed people to just do

	return ERR_PTR(-ENOMEM);

etc for errors, and then in the caller you just check for IS_ERR().

That would have made the result much cleaner, and avoided that whole 
"return two different things" issue.

I pulled it, but I want to register my protest.

			Linus
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