On Tue, Apr 09, 2019 at 07:58:08PM -0700, Eric Biggers wrote: > It could check a flag IOP_GET_LINK in ->i_opflags instead, so it would be the > same number of checks. See patch below. With that patch ->i_link is completely unused if ->get_link() is non-NULL, so you get a method call on each traversal... > Benefits are that we get code that isn't actively misleading (via > simple_get_link() existing but actually never being called), and filesystems can > cache a symlink target in ->i_link if it becomes available later, i.e. if it's > not immediately available at iget() time. Otherwise a filesystem-private field > has to be used instead. (For fscrypt, I'd probably use fscrypt_info::ci_link.) What's to stop you from doing just that right now? You'd need to take care with barriers, but you'd need that anyway... As soon as ->i_link is set you'll get no more ->get_link() on that sucker, using the cached value from that point on. IDGI...