Steven Rostedt <rostedt@xxxxxxxxxxx> writes: > > No it will not be fine. You should not be using dentry at all. I thought > this was going to convert debugfs over to kernfs. The debugfs_node should > be using kernfs and completely eliminate the use of dentry. > > <snip> > > What caller should ever touch a dentry? What I got from my "conversation" > with Linus, is that dentry is an internal caching descriptor of the VFS > layer, and should only be used by the VFS layer. Nothing outside of VFS > should ever need a dentry. > > -- Steve I agree that just wrapping a dentry shouldn't be the final state for debugfs_node, but this patch series is _only_ trying to introduce debugfs_node as an opaque wrapper/handle. It isn't clear to me that there is consensus on even using kernfs for debugfs. Even if there was consensus, a full conversion to kernfs would take 10x as much code and be extremely difficult to automate. For example, using kernfs would require migrating all of the debugfs users' file_operations to use the kernfs equivalent. I figure any change away from persistent dentry handles for debugfs requires introducing something akin to debugfs_node, so we could get that out of the way first. Thanks, David Reaver
