On Wed, 2021-08-25 at 07:32 +0100, Christoph Hellwig wrote: > On Tue, Aug 24, 2021 at 03:44:48PM -0400, Theodore Ts'o wrote: > > The problem is whether we use struct head_page, or folio, or mempages, > > we're going to be subsystem users' faces. And people who are using it > > every day will eventually get used to anything, whether it's "folio" > > or "xmoqax", we sould give a thought to newcomers to Linux file system > > code. If they see things like "read_folio()", they are going to be > > far more confused than "read_pages()" or "read_mempages()". > > Are they? It's not like page isn't some randomly made up term > as well, just one that had a lot more time to spread. > Absolutely. "folio" is no worse than "page", we've just had more time to get used to "page". > > So if someone sees "kmem_cache_alloc()", they can probably make a > > guess what it means, and it's memorable once they learn it. > > Similarly, something like "head_page", or "mempages" is going to a bit > > more obvious to a kernel newbie. So if we can make a tiny gesture > > towards comprehensibility, it would be good to do so while it's still > > easier to change the name. > > All this sounds really weird to me. I doubt there is any name that > nicely explains "structure used to manage arbitrary power of two > units of memory in the kernel" very well. So I agree with willy here, > let's pick something short and not clumsy. I initially found the folio > name a little strange, but working with it I got used to it quickly. > And all the other uggestions I've seen s far are significantly worse, > especially all the odd compounds with page in it. Same here. Compound words are especially bad, as newbies will continually have to look at whether it's "page_set" or "pageset". -- Jeff Layton <jlayton@xxxxxxxxxx>
