Re: [PATCH v12 1/4] mm/vmalloc: allow to set node and align in vrealloc

Danilo Krummrich
2025-07-10T09:57:59Z

On Thu Jul 10, 2025 at 2:39 AM CEST, Alexei Starovoitov wrote:
> On Wed, Jul 9, 2025 at 4:26 PM Danilo Krummrich <dakr@kernel.org> wrote:
>>
>> On Thu Jul 10, 2025 at 1:14 AM CEST, Alexei Starovoitov wrote:
>> > On Wed, Jul 9, 2025 at 3:57 PM Danilo Krummrich <dakr@kernel.org> wrote:
>> >>
>> >> On 7/10/25 12:53 AM, Alexei Starovoitov wrote:
>> >> > On Wed, Jul 9, 2025 at 10:25 AM Vitaly Wool <vitaly.wool@konsulko.se> wrote:
>> >> >>
>> >> >>
>> >> >> -void *vrealloc_noprof(const void *p, size_t size, gfp_t flags)
>> >> >> +void *vrealloc_node_align_noprof(const void *p, size_t size, unsigned long align,
>> >> >> + gfp_t flags, int node)
>> >> >> {
>> >> >
>> >> > imo this is a silly pattern to rename functions because they
>> >> > got new arguments.
>> >> > The names of the args are clear enough "align" and "node".
>> >> > I see no point in adding the same suffixes to a function name.
>> >> > In the future this function will receive another argument and
>> >> > the function would be renamed again?!
>> >> > "_noprof" suffix makes sense, since it's there for alloc_hooks,
>> >> > but "_node_align_" is unnecessary.
>> >>
>> >> Do you have an alternative proposal given that we also have vrealloc() and
>> >> vrealloc_node()?
>> >
>> > vrealloc_node()?! There is no such thing in the tree.
>> > There are various k[zm]alloc_node() which are artifacts of the past
>> > when NUMA just appeared and people cared about CONFIG_NUMA vs not.
>> > Nowadays NUMA is everywhere and any new code must support NUMA
>> > from the start. Hence no point in carrying old baggage and obsolete names.
>>
>> This patch adds it; do you suggest to redefine vrealloc_noprof() to take align
>> and nid? If we don't mind being inconsistent with krealloc_noprof() and
>> kvrealloc_noprof() that's fine I guess.
>>
>> FWIW, I prefer consistency.
>
> What inconsistency are you talking about? That
> krealloc_noprof(const void *p, size_t new_size, gfp_t flags)
> and
> vrealloc_noprof(const void *p, size_t size, unsigned long align,
> gfp_t flags, int node)
> have different number of arguments?!
>
> See:
> alloc_pages_noprof(gfp_t gfp, unsigned int order);
> __alloc_pages_noprof(gfp_t gfp, unsigned int order, int preferred_nid,
> nodemask_t *nodemask);
>
> Adding double underscore to keep all existing callers of
> vrealloc_noprof() without changes and do:
>
> vrealloc_noprof(const void *p, size_t size, gfp_t flags);
> __vrealloc_noprof(const void *p, size_t size, unsigned long align,
> gfp_t flags, int node);
>
> is fine and consistent with how things were done in the past,
> but adding "_node_align_" to the function name and code churn to all
> callsites is a cargo cult.

As Vitaly mentioned in a different reply, this would be inconsistent with the
'k' and 'kv' variants, which have the suffix '_node'.

Anyways, in general I don't think that adding underscores for functions that
basically do the same thing but are getting more specialized is a great pattern
for things that are not strictly limited to a narrow context.

Please note, I'm not saying we should encode additional arguments in the name
either. I think it really depends on the actual case.

In this case, it seems to make sense to me that there is e.g. kmalloc() and
kmalloc_node().

For a caller that's much more useful, i.e. I want classic kmalloc(), but want to
set the node, hence kmalloc_node(). Calling it __kmalloc() instead seems a bit
random.

Or do you only refer to the *_noprof() variants, which are not exported to
users? But even then, underscores still don't seem very expressive.

I'm not maintaining this code though, so just take it FWIW. :)