Re: [PATCH 2/3] mm/gup: Introduce get_user_pages_fast_longterm()

On Mon, Feb 11, 2019 at 02:55:10PM -0800, Dan Williams wrote:

quoted

I also wonder if someone should think about making fast into a flag
too..

But I'm not sure when fast should be used vs when it shouldn't :(

Effectively fast should always be used just in case the user cares
about performance. It's just that it may fail and need to fall back to
requiring the vma.

But the fall back / slow path is hidden inside the API, so when should
the caller care? 

ie when should the caller care to use gup_fast vs gup_unlocked? (the
comments say they are the same, but this seems to be a mistake)

Based on some of the comments in the code it looks like this API is
trying to convert itself into:

long get_user_pages_locked(struct task_struct *tsk, struct mm_struct *mm,
                           unsigned long start, unsigned long nr_pages,
			   unsigned int gup_flags, struct page **pages,
			   struct vm_area_struct **vmas, bool *locked)

long get_user_pages_unlocked(struct task_struct *tsk, struct mm_struct *mm,
                             unsigned long start, unsigned long nr_pages,
			     unsigned int gup_flags, struct page **pages)

(and maybe a FOLL_FAST if there is some reason we have _fast and
_unlocked)

The reason I ask, is that if there is no reason for fast vs unlocked
then maybe Ira should convert HFI to use gup_unlocked and move the
'fast' code into unlocked?

ie move incrementally closer to the desired end-state here.

Jason