linux-kernel - Re: [PATCH] debugfs: New debugfs interface for creation of files, directory and symlinks

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Message-ID: <CAOJFanXZEUfM4GQS62u4oR-KwywdLGOciOcgzmrM9zW+kOrXkg@mail.gmail.com>
Date:	Thu, 3 May 2012 03:28:17 +0530
From:	Sasikanth babu <sasikanth.v19@...il.com>
To:	Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@...uxfoundation.org>
Cc:	Andrew Morton <akpm@...ux-foundation.org>,
	linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org
Subject: Re: [PATCH] debugfs: New debugfs interface for creation of files,
 directory and symlinks

On Wed, May 2, 2012 at 9:01 PM, Greg Kroah-Hartman
<gregkh@...uxfoundation.org> wrote:
> On Wed, May 02, 2012 at 06:20:54PM +0530, Sasikantha babu wrote:
>> As we know the current debugfs file or directory or symlink creation
>> doesn't return proper error codes to the caller on failure. Because
>> of this caller and user could not able to find the exact reason of
>> the failure.
>
> And what is the problem with this?  Either the file is created or not,
> you really shouldn't care anymore than that.  It's not like you are
> going to retry the creation, or are you?
>
> Who really cares if the file is failed to be created?

 In most of cases I had observed caller of debufs_create_file or
 debufs_create_dir always returns -ENOMEM on failure, which is not true.
 I felt returning proper error code will help in figuring out the actual
 reason of the failure (for eg: it can be -EEXISTS based on the error
 caller can change the name of the file or dir)

>
>> As Andrew Morton suggested (http://www.spinics.net/lists/linux-mm/msg33617.html)
>> introduced new debugfs interface to create debugfs entries. Newer APIs
>> returns proper error codes(ERR_PTR) on failure.
>
> Again, why?  What root problem are you trying to solve here?

   The usage of debugfs throughout the kernel is not uniform especially the
   error handling scenarios. Some place it is IS_ERR validations , other place
   against NULL and some place ignoring the return value. Just tried to make it
   uniform.
>
> thanks,
>
> greg k-h
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