Re: [PATCH 11/30] mm: __GFP_MEMALLOC

Peter Zijlstra
2008-07-25T09:35:40Z

On Fri, 2008-07-25 at 18:29 +0900, KOSAKI Motohiro wrote:
> Hi Peter,
>
> > __GFP_MEMALLOC will allow the allocation to disregard the watermarks,
> > much like PF_MEMALLOC.
> >
> > It allows one to pass along the memalloc state in object related allocation
> > flags as opposed to task related flags, such as sk->sk_allocation.
>
> Is this properly name?
> page alloc is always "mem alloc".
>
> you wrote comment as "Use emergency reserves" and
> this flag works to turn on ALLOC_NO_WATERMARKS.
>
> then, __GFP_NO_WATERMARK or __GFP_EMERGENCY are better?

We've been through this pick a better name thing several times :-/

Yes I agree, __GFP_MEMALLOC is a misnomer, however its consistent with
PF_MEMALLOC and __GFP_NOMEMALLOC - of which people know the semantics.

Creating a new name with similar semantics can only serve to confuse.

So unless enough people think its worth renaming all of them, I think
we're better off with this name.