On Wed, Jun 23, 2021 at 02:58:32PM -0700, Omar Sandoval wrote:

Ah, I was stuck on thinking about this calling convention:

	struct encoded_iov encoded_iov;
	char compressed_data[...];
	struct iovec iov[] = {
		{ &encoded_iov, sizeof(encoded_iov) },
		{ compressed_data, sizeof(compressed_data) },
	};
	preadv2(fd, iov, 2, -1, RWF_ENCODED);

But what you described would look more like:

	// Needs to be large enough for maximum returned header + data.
	char buffer[...];
	struct iovec iov[] = {
		{ buffer, sizeof(buffer) },
	};
	preadv2(fd, iov, 2, -1, RWF_ENCODED);
	// We should probably align the buffer.
	struct encoded_iov *encoded_iov = (void *)buffer;
	char *data = buffer + encoded_iov->size;

That's a little uglier, but it should work, and allows for arbitrary
extensions. So, among these three alternatives (fixed size structure
with reserved space, variable size structure like above, or ioctl),
which would you prefer?

Variable-sized structure would seem to be the easiest from the kernel
POV and the interface is the easiest to describe - "you read the
encoded data preceded by the header"...