On Tue, Nov 08, 2022 at 04:55:29PM +0100, Vlastimil Babka wrote: > Hi, > > as we all know, we currently have three slab allocators. As we discussed at > LPC [1], it is my hope that one of these allocators has a future, and two of > them do not. > > The unsurprising reasons include code maintenance burden, other features > compatible with only a subset of allocators (or more effort spent on the > features), blocking API improvements (more on that below), and my inability > to pronounce SLAB and SLUB in a properly distinguishable way, without > resorting to spelling out the letters. > > I think (but may be proven wrong) that SLOB is the easier target of the two > to be removed, so I'd like to focus on it first. Great! SLOB is not supported by the kernel memory accounting code, so if we'll deprecate SLOB, we can remove all those annoying ifndefs. But I wonder if we can deprecate SLAB too? Or at least use the moment to ask every non-SLUB user on why they can't/don't want to use SLUB. Are there any known advantages of SLAB over SLUB? Also, for memory-constrained users we might want to add some guide on how to configure SLUB to minimize the memory footprint. Thank you! Roman
