Re: [PATCH 3/8] swap: don't add ITER_BVEC flag to direct_IO rw

[Al Viro <viro@ZenIV.linux.org.uk>]

On Sun, Dec 14, 2014 at 09:26:57PM -0800, Omar Sandoval wrote:
> The rw argument to direct_IO has some ill-defined semantics. Some
> filesystems (e.g., ext4, FAT) decide whether they're doing a write with
> rw == WRITE, but others (e.g., XFS) check rw & WRITE. Let's set a good
> example in the swap file code and say ITER_BVEC belongs in
> iov_iter->flags but not in rw. This caters to the least common
> denominator and avoids a sweeping change of every direct_IO
> implementation for now.

Frankly, this is bogus.  If anything, let's just kill the first argument
completely - ->direct_IO() can always pick it from iter->type.

As for catering to the least common denominator...  To hell with the lowest
common denominator.  How many instances of ->direct_IO() do we have, anyway?
24 in the mainline (and we don't give a flying fuck for out-of-tree code, as
a matter of policy).  Moreover, several are of "do nothing" variety.

FWIW, 'rw' is a mess.  We used to have this:
	READ: O_DIRECT read
	WRITE: O_DIRECT write
	KERNEL_WRITE: swapout

These days KERNEL_WRITE got replaced with ITER_BVEC | WRITE.  The thing is,
we have a bunch of places where we explicitly checked for being _equal_ to
WRITE.  I.e. the checks that gave a negative on swapouts.  I suspect that most
of them are wrong and should trigger on all writes, including swapouts, but
I really didn't want to dig into that pile of fun back then.  That's the
main reason why 'rw' argument has survived at all...

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