linux-kernel - Re: Folios: Can we resolve this please?

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Date:   Wed, 1 Sep 2021 12:18:04 +0200
From:   David Hildenbrand <david@...hat.com>
To:     David Howells <dhowells@...hat.com>, torvalds@...ux-foundation.org,
        Andrew Morton <akpm@...ux-foundation.org>,
        Johannes Weiner <hannes@...xchg.org>
Cc:     Matthew Wilcox <willy@...radead.org>,
        Theodore Ts'o <tytso@....edu>,
        Christoph Hellwig <hch@...radead.org>,
        Alexander Viro <viro@...iv.linux.org.uk>,
        Vlastimil Babka <vbabka@...e.cz>,
        Rasmus Villemoes <linux@...musvillemoes.dk>,
        "Darrick J. Wong" <djwong@...nel.org>,
        Dan Williams <dan.j.williams@...el.com>,
        Jeff Layton <jlayton@...nel.org>, linux-mm@...ck.org,
        linux-fsdevel@...r.kernel.org, linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org
Subject: Re: Folios: Can we resolve this please?

On 01.09.21 00:15, David Howells wrote:
> Hi Linus, Andrew, Johannes,
> 
> Can we come to a quick resolution on folios?  I'd really like this to be
> solved in this merge window if at all possible as I (and others) have stuff
> that will depend on and will conflict with Willy's folio work.  It would be
> great to get this sorted one way or another.
> 
> As I see it, there are three issues, I think, and I think they kind of go like
> this:
> 
>   (1) Johannes wants to get away from pages being used as the unit of memory
>       currency and thinks that folios aren't helpful in this regard[1].  There
>       seems to be some disagreement about where this is heading.
> 
>   (2) Linus isn't entirely keen on Willy's approach[2], with a bottom up
>       approach hiding the page objects behind a new type from the pov of the
>       filesystem, but would rather see the page struct stay the main API type
>       and the changes be hidden transparently inside of that.
> 
>       I think from what Linus said, he may be in favour (if that's not too
>       strong a word) of using a new type to make sure we don't miss the
>       necessary changes[3].
> 
>   (3) Linus isn't in favour of the name 'folio' for the new type[2].  Various
>       names have been bandied around and Linus seems okay with "pageset"[4],
>       though it's already in minor(-ish) use[5][6].  Willy has an alternate
>       patchset with "folio" changed to "pageset"[7].
> 
> With regard to (1), I think the folio concept could be used in future to hide
> at least some of the paginess from filesystems.
> 
> With regard to (2), I think a top-down approach won't work until and unless we
> wrap all accesses to struct page by filesystems (and device drivers) in
> wrapper functions - we need to stop filesystems fiddling with page internals
> because what page internals may mean may change.
> 
> With regard to (3), I'm personally fine with the name "folio", as are other
> people[8][9][10][11], but I could also live with a conversion to "pageset".
> 
> Is it possible to take the folios patchset as-is and just live with the name,
> or just take Willy's rename-job (although it hasn't had linux-next soak time
> yet)?  Or is the approach fundamentally flawed and in need of redoing?

Whatever we do, it would be great to get it out of -next one way (merge) 
or the other (drop) ASAP, as it's a lot of code churn, affecting various 
subsystems.

But merging it in a (for some people) suboptimal state just to get it 
out of -next might not necessarily be what we want.

-- 
Thanks,

David / dhildenb