linux-kernel - Re: [PATCH v5 3/4] x86/mm/pat: Convert pmd code to use ptdescs

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Message-ID: <aYz4ac9cCW3EyhAC@fedora>
Date: Wed, 11 Feb 2026 13:45:13 -0800
From: "Vishal Moola (Oracle)" <vishal.moola@...il.com>
To: Dave Hansen <dave.hansen@...el.com>
Cc: linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org, linux-mm@...ck.org, x86@...nel.org,
	"Mike Rapoport (Microsoft)" <rppt@...nel.org>,
	akpm@...ux-foundation.org,
	"Matthew Wilcox (Oracle)" <willy@...radead.org>,
	Dave Hansen <dave.hansen@...ux.intel.com>,
	Andy Lutomirski <luto@...nel.org>,
	Peter Zijlstra <peterz@...radead.org>
Subject: Re: [PATCH v5 3/4] x86/mm/pat: Convert pmd code to use ptdescs

On Wed, Feb 11, 2026 at 12:07:05PM -0800, Dave Hansen wrote:
> On 2/11/26 11:52, Vishal Moola (Oracle) wrote:
> > Also, rename *_pmd_page() functions to *_pmd(). Rename them now to avoid
> > any confusion later. Eventually these allocations will be backed by a
> > ptdesc not a page, but that's not important to callers either.
> 
> So, pages are still a thing, whether the API says 'struct page' or not.
> The hardware kinda uses pages for page tables. ;)
>
> Could we please leave out the unnecessary churn from the renames?

Yeah I'll drop the renames. I thought it'd be better for
correctness-sake, as the idea is to "allocate memory for a page table"
rather than "allocate a generic page for a page table."

As long as its using the right APIs the naming doesn't really matter
to me.