Re: [PATCH][RFC] get rid of busy-wait in shrink_dcache_tree()

Al Viro
2026-01-23T00:35:13Z

On Thu, Jan 22, 2026 at 04:19:56PM -0800, Linus Torvalds wrote:
> On Thu, 22 Jan 2026 at 12:18, Al Viro <viro@zeniv.linux.org.uk> wrote:
> >
> > +static inline void d_add_waiter(struct dentry *dentry, struct select_data *p)
> > +{
> > + struct select_data *v = (void *)dentry->d_u.d_alias.next;
> > + init_completion(&p->completion);
> > + p->next = v;
> > + dentry->d_u.d_alias.next = (void *)p;
> > +}
>
> I tend to not love it when I see new users of completions - I've seen
> too many mis-uses - but this does seem to be a good use-case for them.
>
> That said, I absolutely abhor your cast. Christ - that 'd_u' is
> *already* a union, exactly because that thing gets used for different
> things - just add a new union member, instead of mis-using an existing
> union member that then requires you to cast the data to a different
> form.
>
> Yes, you had an explanation for why you used d_alias.next, but please
> make that explanation be in the union itself, not in the commit
> message of something that mis-uses the union. Please?
>
> That way there's no need for a cast, and you can name that new union
> member something that also clarifies things on a source level
> ("eviction_completion" or whatever).
>
> Or am I missing something?

In practice it doesn't really matter, but we don't want to initialize
that field to NULL - no good place for doing that. Sure, the entire
d_alias has been subject to hlist_del_init() or INIT_HLIST_NODE(), so
any pointer field unioned with it will end up being NULL without
any assignments to it, but... ugh. "We have a union of two-pointer
struct, a pointer and some other stuff; we'd set both members of that
struct member to NULL and count upon the pointer member of union
having been zeroed by that" leaves a bad taste.