Re: [PATCH v3 0/6] KVM: guest_memfd: support for uffd minor

[Christian Brauner <brauner@kernel.org>]

On Mon, Apr 07, 2025 at 04:46:48PM +0200, David Hildenbrand wrote:
> On 07.04.25 16:24, Liam R. Howlett wrote:
> > * Nikita Kalyazin <kalyazin@amazon.com> [250407 10:05]:
> > > 
> > 
> > ...
> > 
> > > > 
> > > > All of this is extremely confusing because the onus of figuring out what
> > > > the final code will look like is put on the reviewer.  As it is, we have
> > > > issues with people not doing enough review of the code (due to limited
> > > > time).  One way to get reviews is to make the barrier of entry as low as
> > > > possible.
> > > > 
> > > > I spent Friday going down a rabbit hole of patches referring to each
> > > > other as dependencies and I gave up.  It looks like I mistook one set of
> > > > patches as required vs them requiring the same in-flight ones as your
> > > > patches.
> > > > 
> > > > I am struggling to see how we can adequately support all of you given
> > > > the way the patches are sent out in batches with dependencies - it is
> > > > just too time consuming to sort out.
> > > 
> > > I'm happy to do whatever I can to make the review easier.  I suppose the
> > > extreme case is to wait for the dependencies to get accepted, effectively
> > > serialising submissions, but that slows the process down significantly.  For
> > > example, I received very good feedback on v1 and v2 of this series and was
> > > able to address it instead of waiting for the dependency.  Would including
> > > the required patches directly in the series help?  My only concern is in
> > > that case the same patch will be submitted multiple times (as a part of
> > > every depending series), but if it's better, I'll be doing that instead.
> > 
> > Don't resend patches that someone else is upstreaming, that'll cause
> > other problems.
> > 
> > Three methods come to mind:
> > 
> > 1. As you stated, wait for the dependencies to land.  This is will mean
> > what you are working against is well tested and won't change (and you
> > won't have to re-spin due to an unstable base).
> > 
> > 2. Combine them into a bigger patch set.  I can then pull one patch set
> > and look at the parts of interest to the mm side.
> > 
> > 3. Provide a git repo with the necessary changes together.
> > 
> > I think 2 and 3 together should be used for the guest_memfd patches.
> > Someone needs to be managing these to send upstream.  See the discussion
> > in another patch set on guest_memfd here [1].
> 
> The issue is that most extensions are fairly independent from each other,
> except that they built up on Fuad's mmap support,
> 
> Sending all together as one thing might not be the best option.
> 
> Once basic mmap support is upstream, some of the extensions (e.g., directmap
> removal) can go in next.
> 
> So until that is upstream, I agree that tagging the stuff that builds up on
> that is the right thing to do, and providing git trees is another very good
> idea.
> 
> I'll prioritize getting Fuad's mmap stuff reviewed. (I keep saying that, I
> know)

Fwiw, b4 allows to specify dependencies so you can b4 shazam/am and it
will pull in all prerequisite patches:

b4 prep --edit-deps           Edit the series dependencies in your defined $EDITOR (or core.editor)