Re: [PATCH RESEND 09/12] mm: make vm_area_desc utilise vma_flags_t only

On Tue, Jan 20, 2026 at 03:10:54PM +0000, Lorenzo Stoakes wrote:
> The natural implication of what you're saying is that we can no longer use this
> from _anywhere_ because - hey - passing this by value is bad so now _everything_
> has to be re-written as:

No, I'm not saying that, I'm saying this specific case where you are
making an accessor to reach an unknown value located on the heap
should be using a pointer as both a matter of style and to simplify
life for the compiler.

> 	vma_flags_t flags_to_set = mk_vma_flags(<flags>);
> 
> 	if (vma_flags_test(&flags, &flags_to_set)) { ... }

This is quite a different situation, it is a known const at compile
time value located on the stack.

> If it was just changing this one function I'd still object as it makes it differ
> from _every other test predicate_ using vma_flags_t but maybe to humour you I'd
> change it, but surely by this argument you're essentially objecting to the whole
> series?

I only think that if you are taking a heap input that is not of known
value you should continue to pass by pointer as is generally expected
in the C style we use.

And it isn't saying anything about the overall technique in the
series, just a minor note about style.

> I am not sure about this 'idiomatic kernel style' thing either, it feels rather
> conjured. Yes you wouldn't ordinarily pass something larger than a register size
> by-value, but here the intent is for it to be inlined anyway right?

Well, exactly, we don't normally pass things larger than an interger
by value, that isn't the style, so I don't think it is such a great
thing to introduce here kind of unnecessarily.

The troubles I recently had were linked to odd things like gcov and
very old still supported versions of gcc. Also I saw a power compiler
make a very strange choice to not inline something that evaluated to a
constant.

Jason