> This isn't hiding information from the lower layers. The only use of the > dentry is much higher up in the call chain. If you take a look at > sys_chmod (another inode attr modifying call) the dentry is really only > used in > > sys_chmod->chown_common->notify_change->fsnotify_change And i_op->setattr(). > > The operations that actually change the inode metadata on disk do not > touch the dentry at all except to get the inode(rightly so since it is > an INODE operation). "Disk" and "inode" are concepts specific to a certain class of filesystems, but make no sense for a different set. What makes sense for all filesystems is the hierarchy of path components, which is what dentries represent. Miklos -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-fsdevel" in the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
