On Wed, Apr 03, 2019 at 06:25:20AM +1100, Tobin C. Harding wrote: > On Tue, Apr 02, 2019 at 05:48:24PM +0100, Al Viro wrote: > > On Tue, Apr 02, 2019 at 09:49:34AM -0600, Jonathan Corbet wrote: > > > On Wed, 27 Mar 2019 16:16:53 +1100 > > > "Tobin C. Harding" <tobin@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > > > > > > > Hi Al, > > > > > > > > This series converts the VFS file Documentation/filesystems/vfs.txt to > > > > reStructuredText format. Please consider taking this series through > > > > your tree as apposed to Jon's tree because this set makes a fair amount > > > > of changes to VFS files (and also the VFS tree and docs tree are out of > > > > sync right now with the recent work by Mauro and Neil). > > > > > > Al, do you have any thoughts on how you want to handle this? I was about > > > to apply Jeff Layton's vfs.txt update, but would rather not create > > > conflicts unnecessarily. Let me know if you'd like me to pick this work > > > up. > > > > Frankly, I would rather see that file be eventually replaced by something > > saner, and I'm not talking about the format. > > Are you able to extrapolate on this comment please? Is this something > someone new to the VFS (me) can do with a little nudge in the right > direction or is this something that needs thorough knowledge of the VFS? Put it that way - IMO the best way to do it is not a list of methods with explanations what each does, but a bunch of per-data structure documents describing their life cycles. The fundamental ones for VFS would be * inode * dentry * super_block * (vfs)mount * file * files_struct Having a list of methods is nice, but those would be better off with short description along with "see <document> for details, including the locking, etc."; said short descriptions make little sense without the background...