linux-kernel - Re: Uninline kcalloc

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Date:	Tue, 14 Feb 2012 16:08:26 -0600 (CST)
From:	Christoph Lameter <cl@...ux.com>
To:	Xi Wang <xi.wang@...il.com>
cc:	Pekka Enberg <penberg@...nel.org>,
	Andrew Morton <akpm@...ux-foundation.org>,
	Dan Carpenter <dan.carpenter@...cle.com>,
	Jesper Juhl <jj@...osbits.net>, Jens Axboe <axboe@...nel.dk>,
	linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org, Matt Mackall <mpm@...enic.com>,
	David Rientjes <rientjes@...gle.com>
Subject: Re: Uninline kcalloc

On Tue, 14 Feb 2012, Xi Wang wrote:

> On Feb 14, 2012, at 4:09 PM, Christoph Lameter wrote:
> > IMHO Having a function to deal with the overflow of a multiplication and
> > then do an allocation based on the result is a conflation of two different
> > things that need to be separate. kcalloc only exists because there is
> > an ancient user space function that somehow got a second parameter instead
> > of just using the same as malloc().
>
> I don't understand why these kcalloc patches have anything to do
> with kmalloc(SAFE_ARRAY_SIZE(...), ...) you proposed.

Not sure why you are so hung up on SAFE_ARRAY_SIZE. It was an idea to
discuss. Certainly having an inline function seems to be better.

> It also doesn't make much sense to force the caller to check the
> result of SAFE_ARRAY_SIZE() or calculate_array_size() before passing
> it to kmalloc().  This is too verbose.

kcalloc is still there. Certainly useful for legacy purposes. But I'd feel
better if I had fine grained control over the size of my allocation rather
than rely on the slab allocators to check up on my multiplication.

With these patches both is possible. And if you want the check of an
allocation that is not zeroed then you can do so because you have a
function that will perform the size check for you without calling into the
slab allocator.

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