linux-kernel - Re: [RFC PATCH v7 9/9] vfs: expose STATX

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Message-ID: <c303cf0701a2c09487bda33012bc0ceb79f211c0.camel@kernel.org>
Date:   Tue, 18 Oct 2022 10:56:55 -0400
From:   Jeff Layton <jlayton@...nel.org>
To:     Dave Chinner <david@...morbit.com>
Cc:     tytso@....edu, adilger.kernel@...ger.ca, djwong@...nel.org,
        trondmy@...merspace.com, neilb@...e.de, viro@...iv.linux.org.uk,
        zohar@...ux.ibm.com, xiubli@...hat.com, chuck.lever@...cle.com,
        lczerner@...hat.com, jack@...e.cz, bfields@...ldses.org,
        brauner@...nel.org, fweimer@...hat.com,
        linux-btrfs@...r.kernel.org, linux-fsdevel@...r.kernel.org,
        linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org, ceph-devel@...r.kernel.org,
        linux-ext4@...r.kernel.org, linux-nfs@...r.kernel.org,
        linux-xfs@...r.kernel.org
Subject: Re: [RFC PATCH v7 9/9] vfs: expose STATX_VERSION to userland

On Tue, 2022-10-18 at 06:35 -0400, Jeff Layton wrote:
> On Tue, 2022-10-18 at 09:14 +1100, Dave Chinner wrote:
> > On Mon, Oct 17, 2022 at 06:57:09AM -0400, Jeff Layton wrote:
> > > From: Jeff Layton <jlayton@...hat.com>
> > > 
> > > Claim one of the spare fields in struct statx to hold a 64-bit inode
> > > version attribute. When userland requests STATX_VERSION, copy the
> > > value from the kstat struct there, and stop masking off
> > > STATX_ATTR_VERSION_MONOTONIC.
> > 
> > Can we please make the name more sepcific than "version"? It's way
> > too generic and - we already have userspace facing "version" fields
> > for inodes that refer to the on-disk format version exposed in
> > various UAPIs. It's common for UAPI structures used for file
> > operations to have a "version" field that refers to the *UAPI
> > structure version* rather than file metadata or data being retrieved
> > from the file in question.
> > 
> > The need for an explanatory comment like this:
> > 
> > > +	__u64	stx_version; /* Inode change attribute */
> > 
> > demonstrates it is badly named. If you want it known as an inode
> > change attribute, then don't name the variable "version". In
> > reality, it really needs to be an opaque cookie, not something
> > applications need to decode directly to make sense of.
> > 
> 
> Fair enough. I started with this being named stx_change_attr and other
> people objected. I then changed to stx_ino_version, but the "_ino"
> seemed redundant.
> 
> I'm open to suggestions here. Naming things like this is hard.
> 

How about:

    STATX_CHANGE / statx->stx_change / STATX_ATTR_CHANGE_MONOTONIC

?
-- 
Jeff Layton <jlayton@...nel.org>