Re: [PATCH 3/6] drm/i915: use vmap in shmem_pin_map

[Matthew Wilcox <willy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Tue, Sep 22, 2020 at 04:39:06PM +0200, Christoph Hellwig wrote:
> On Tue, Sep 22, 2020 at 12:21:44PM +0100, Matthew Wilcox wrote:
> > Actually, vfree() will work today; I cc'd you on a documentation update
> > to make it clear that this is permitted.
> 
> vfree calls __free_pages, the i915 and a lot of other code calls
> put_page.  They are mostly the same, but not quite and everytime I
> look into that mess I'm more confused than before.
> 
> Can someone in the know write sensible documentation on when to use
> __free_page(s) vs put_page?

I started on that, and then I found a bug that's been lurking for 12
years, so that delayed the documentation somewhat.  The short answer is
that __free_pages() lets you free non-compound high-order pages while
put_page() can only free order-0 and compound pages.

I would really like to overhaul our memory allocation APIs:

current                 new
__get_free_page(s)      alloc_page(s)
free_page(s)            free_page(s)
alloc_page(s)           get_free_page(s)
__free_pages            put_page_order

Then put_page() and put_page_order() are more obviously friends.

But I cannot imagine a world in which Linus says yes to that upheaval.
He's previous expressed dislike of the get_free_page() family of APIs,
and thinks all those callers should just use kmalloc().  Maybe we can
make that transition happen, now that kmalloc() aligns larger allocations.