Re: [PATCH v5 02/12] common/rc: Add _require_fio_version helper

[John Garry <john.g.garry@oracle.com>]

On 09/09/2025 08:16, Ojaswin Mujoo wrote:
>>> This requires the user to know the version which corresponds to the feature.
>>> Is that how things are done for other such utilities and their versions vs
>>> features?
>>>
>>> I was going to suggest exporting something like
>>> _require_fio_atomic_writes(), and _require_fio_atomic_writes() calls
>>> _require_fio_version() to check the version.
>> (Sorry, I made a half reply in my last email)
>>
>> This looks better than only using _require_fio_version. But the nature is still
>> checking fio version. If we don't have a better idea to check if fio really
>> support atomic writes, the _require_fio_version is still needed.
>> Or we rename it to "__require_fio_version" (one more "_"), to mark it's
>> not recommended using directly. But that looks a bit like a trick 😂
>>
>> Thanks,
>> Zorro
> Hey Zorro, I agree with your points that version might not be the best
> indicator esp for downstream software, but at this point I'm unsure
> what's the workaround.
> 
> One thing that comes to mind is to let fio do the atomic write and use
> the tracepoints to confirm if RWF_ATOMIC was passed, but that adds a lot
> of dependency on tracing framework being present (im unsure if something
> like this is used somewhere in xfstests before). Further it's messy to
> figure out that out of all the IO fio command will do, which one to
> check for RWF_ATOMIC.
> 
> It can be done I suppose but is this sort of complexity something we
> want to add is the question. Or do we just go ahead with the version
> check.

I think that just checking the version is fine for this specific 
feature. But I still also think that versioning should be hidden from 
the end user, i.e. we should provide a helper like 
_require_fio_atomic_writes

thanks,
John