Re: [PATCH v19 3/7] xbitmap: add more operations

On Fri, Dec 15, 2017 at 10:49:15AM -0800, Matthew Wilcox wrote:

Here's the API I'm looking at right now.  The user need take no lock;
the locking (spinlock) is handled internally to the implementation.

I looked at the API some more and found some flaws:
 - how does xbit_alloc communicate back which bit it allocated?
 - What if xbit_find_set() is called on a completely empty array with
   a range of 0, ULONG_MAX -- there's no invalid number to return.
 - xbit_clear() can't return an error.  Neither can xbit_zero().
 - Need to add __must_check to various return values to discourage sloppy
   programming

So I modify the proposed API we compete with thusly:

bool xbit_test(struct xbitmap *, unsigned long bit);
int __must_check xbit_set(struct xbitmap *, unsigned long bit, gfp_t);
void xbit_clear(struct xbitmap *, unsigned long bit);
int __must_check xbit_alloc(struct xbitmap *, unsigned long *bit, gfp_t);

int __must_check xbit_fill(struct xbitmap *, unsigned long start,
                        unsigned long nbits, gfp_t);
void xbit_zero(struct xbitmap *, unsigned long start, unsigned long nbits);
int __must_check xbit_alloc_range(struct xbitmap *, unsigned long *bit,
                        unsigned long nbits, gfp_t);

bool xbit_find_clear(struct xbitmap *, unsigned long *start, unsigned long max);
bool xbit_find_set(struct xbitmap *, unsigned long *start, unsigned long max);

(I'm a little sceptical about the API accepting 'max' for the find
functions and 'nbits' in the fill/zero/alloc_range functions, but I think
that matches how people want to use it, and it matches how bitmap.h works)