Re: Attempt at "stat light" implementation

[Christoph Hellwig <hch@infradead.org>]

On Tue, Apr 07, 2009 at 10:23:56AM +0400, Oleg Drokin wrote:
> Hello!
> 
>   I quickly realized that perhaps we can use just one extra syscall for fstat, and stat/lstat could be
>   implemented as statat with just current cwd, though I do not know how desirable that is.
> 
>   Also I though that it would be kind of useful to allow the bitmask to be compatible with existing statat
>   flags usage so that we do not need a new statat.

I think the best way to do it is to just define additional flags for the
*statat family, that if present only request partial stat information.

>   Also perhaps the ->getattr just needs a prototype change to accept the flags argument and if the FS cares
>   about it - to use it, but I did not want to do this huge patch touching every FS right now if only to save
>   my time should this approach to be determined as undesirable for one reason or another, so
>   for now I add a ->getattr_light

Yes, no additional method please.  Adding the mask argument to getattr
is a pretty trivial search and replace.