Re: [PATCH][RFC] splice support

[Jens Axboe <axboe@suse.de>]

On Wed, Mar 29 2006, Jens Axboe wrote:
> On Wed, Mar 29 2006, Linus Torvalds wrote:
> > 
> > 
> > On Wed, 29 Mar 2006, Jeff Garzik wrote:
> > > 
> > > 1) What are the consequences of doing
> > > 
> > > 	if (f_op->splice_write)
> > > 		f_op->splice_write(...);
> > > 	else
> > > 		generic_file_splice_write(...);
> > > 
> > > to cause sys_splice() to default to supported?
> > 
> > I'd actually much prefer a number of filesystems just adding he 
> > "generic_file_splice_write()" thing. If it works for them (and it usually 
> > will), it's a one-liner. And it won't do wrong things on filesystems that 
> > have special rules (inode re-validate for networked filesystems etc).
> > 
> > > 2) Do you really have to test f_op itself for NULL?  Is that a stealth
> > > closed-file check or something?  I would be surprised if f_op was ever really
> > > NULL.
> > 
> > Hmm.. I agree that f_op probably should never be NULL (a struct file with 
> > a NULL f_op is pretty useless), but it is a test that we historically have 
> > had. So it's probably best to keep for consistency, and if somebody wants 
> > to, they can clean up all the other tests too (in the read/write/lseek 
> > paths).
> > 
> > I'm inclined to apply this patch (well, I'd like the fixed one). The whole 
> > splice() thing has been rolling around in my head for years, and the pipe 
> > support infrastructure for it has been around for over a year now in 
> > preparation for this.
> > 
> > And the patch actually looks pretty clean to me.
> 
> Go ahead, as mentioned there are a few little extra fixes in the git
> repo. The remaining changes I had in mind don't require anything
> massive, so...

git://brick.kernel.dk/data/git/linux-2.6-block.git splice

is the url, just in case.

-- 
Jens Axboe