Re: [man-pages RFC PATCH v4] statx, inode: document the new STATX_INO_VERSION field

Jeff Layton
2022-09-14T11:51:27Z

On Wed, 2022-09-14 at 09:24 +1000, NeilBrown wrote:
> On Wed, 14 Sep 2022, Jeff Layton wrote:
> >
> > At that point, bumping i_version both before and after makes a bit more
> > sense, since it better ensures that a change will be noticed, whether
> > the related read op comes before or after the statx.
>
> How does bumping it before make any sense at all? Maybe it wouldn't
> hurt much, but how does it help anyone at all?
>

My assumption (maybe wrong) was that timestamp updates were done before
the actual write by design. Does doing it before the write make increase
the chances that the inode metadata writeout will get done in the same
physical I/O as the data write? IDK, just speculating here.

If there's no benefit to doing it before then we should just move it
afterward.

> i_version must appear to change no sooner than the change it reflects
> becomes visible and no later than the request which initiated that
> change is acknowledged as complete.
>
> Why would that definition ever not be satisfactory?

It's fine with me.
--
Jeff Layton <jlayton@kernel.org>