On Tue, 14 Mar 2017, David Laight wrote: > From: Linuxppc-dev Till Smejkal > > Sent: 13 March 2017 22:14 > > The only way until now to create a new memory map was via the exported > > function 'mm_alloc'. Unfortunately, this function not only allocates a new > > memory map, but also completely initializes it. However, with the > > introduction of first class virtual address spaces, some initialization > > steps done in 'mm_alloc' are not applicable to the memory maps needed for > > this feature and hence would lead to errors in the kernel code. > > > > Instead of introducing a new function that can allocate and initialize > > memory maps for first class virtual address spaces and potentially > > duplicate some code, I decided to split the mm_alloc function as well as > > the 'mm_init' function that it uses. > > > > Now there are four functions exported instead of only one. The new > > 'mm_alloc' function only allocates a new mm_struct and zeros it out. If one > > want to have the old behavior of mm_alloc one can use the newly introduced > > function 'mm_alloc_and_setup' which not only allocates a new mm_struct but > > also fully initializes it. > ... > > That looks like bugs waiting to happen. > You need unchanged code to fail to compile. Thank you for this hint. I can give the new mm_alloc function a different name so that code that uses the *old* mm_alloc function will fail to compile. I just reused the old name when I wrote the code, because mm_alloc was only used in very few locations in the kernel (2 times in the whole kernel source) which made identifying and changing them very easy. I also don't think that there will be many users in the kernel for mm_alloc in the future because it is a relatively low level data structure. But if it is better to use a different name for the new function, I am very happy to change this. Till
