Re: [RFC 1/1] fs/reiserfs/journal.c: Remove obsolete __GFP_NOFAIL

tytso
2014-03-22T17:26:17Z

On Sat, Mar 22, 2014 at 10:15:12AM -0700, Andrew Morton wrote:
> > I'll note that since 2011, there has been precious little movement on
> > removing the final few callers of GFP_NOFAIL, and we still have a bit
> > under two dozen of them, including a new one in fs/buffer.c that was
> > added in 2013.
>
> Well. Converting an existing retry-for-ever caller to GFP_NOFAIL is
> good. Adding new retry-for-ever code is not good.

Actually, it wasn't converting an existing loop; it was adding a new
GFP_NOFAIL to fix a reclaim livelock (commit 84235de394d9775bf).

I agree that in ideal world, we'd get rid of all of these. But
sometimes, the cure can be worse than the disesae, and so the whole
"all callers of GFP_NOFAIL are MUST FIX BUGGGY and the maintainers
should be shamed into fixing it" attitude is one that I find a bit odd
myself.

- Ted