On Wed, Dec 20, 2023 at 01:45:01PM -0800, Mina Almasry wrote:

Add the netmem_ref type, an abstraction for network memory.

To add support for new memory types to the net stack, we must first
abstract the current memory type. Currently parts of the net stack
use struct page directly:

- page_pool
- drivers
- skb_frag_t

Originally the plan was to reuse struct page* for the new memory types,
and to set the LSB on the page* to indicate it's not really a page.
However, for compiler type checking we need to introduce a new type.

netmem_ref is introduced to abstract the underlying memory type. Currently
it's a no-op abstraction that is always a struct page underneath. In
parallel there is an undergoing effort to add support for devmem to the
net stack:

https://lore.kernel.org/netdev/20231208005250.2910004-1-almasrymina@google.com/ (local)

Signed-off-by: Mina Almasry <redacted>

---

v3:

- Modify struct netmem from a union of struct page + new types to an opaque
  netmem_ref type.  I went with:

  +typedef void *__bitwise netmem_ref;

  rather than this that Jakub recommended:

  +typedef unsigned long __bitwise netmem_ref;

  Because with the latter the compiler issues warnings to cast NULL to
  netmem_ref. I hope that's ok.

Can you share what the warning was? You might just need __force
attribute. However you might need this __force a lot. I wonder if you
can just follow struct encoded_page example verbatim here.