Re: kmalloc without GFP_xxx?

Denis Vlasenko
2005-06-29T11:19:23Z

On Wednesday 29 June 2005 14:15, Jens Axboe wrote:
> On Wed, Jun 29 2005, Denis Vlasenko wrote:
> > So why can't we have kmalloc_auto(size) which does GFP_KERNEL alloc
> > if called from non-atomic context and GFP_ATOMIC one otherwise?
>
> Because it's a lot better in generel if we force people to think about
> what they are doing wrt memory allocations. You should know if you are
> able to block or not, a lot of functions exported require you to have
> this knowledge anyways. Adding these auto-detection type functions
> encourages bad programming, imho.

Those 'bad programming' people can simply use GFP_ATOMIC always, no?
This would be even worse because kmalloc_auto() will sleep
if it's allowed, but GFP_ATOMIC would not.
--
vda