On 10/2/23 04:38, Niklas Cassel wrote:
So there should probably be a good argument why we would want to
introduce yet another API for providing I/O hints, instead of
extending the I/O hint API that we already have in the kernel right
now. (Especially since it seems fairly easy to modify your patches
to reuse the existing API.)
Here is a strong argument: there is user space software that is using
the F_SET_FILE_RW_HINT API, e.g. Samba. I don't think that the above
arguments are strong enough to tell all developers of user space
software to switch from F_SET_FILE_RW_HINT to another API. This would
force user space developers to check the kernel version before they
can decide which user space API to use. If the new user space API would
get backported to distro kernels then that would cause a real nightmare
for user space developers who want to use F_SET_FILE_RW_HINT or its
equivalent.
Thanks,
Bart.
