At Maintainer Summit, Greg brought up a topic I proposed around
EXPORT_SYMBOL_GPL usage. The motivation was considerations for when
EXPORT_SYMBOL_GPL is warranted and the criteria for taking the exceptional
step of reclassifying an existing export. Specifically, I wanted to make
the case that although the line is fuzzy and hard to specify in abstract
terms, it is nonetheless clear that devm_memremap_pages() and HMM
(Heterogeneous Memory Management) have crossed it. The
devm_memremap_pages() facility should have been EXPORT_SYMBOL_GPL from the
beginning, and HMM as a derivative of that functionality should have
naturally picked up that designation as well.
Contrary to typical rules, the HMM infrastructure was merged upstream with
zero in-tree consumers. There was a promise at the time that those users
would be merged "soon", but it has been over a year with no drivers
arriving. While the Nouveau driver is about to belatedly make good on
that promise it is clear that HMM was targeted first and foremost at an
out-of-tree consumer.
HMM is derived from devm_memremap_pages(), a facility Christoph and I
spearheaded to support persistent memory. It combines a device lifetime
model with a dynamically created 'struct page' / memmap array for any
physical address range. It enables coordination and control of the many
code paths in the kernel built to interact with memory via 'struct page'
objects. With HMM the integration goes even deeper by allowing device
drivers to hook and manipulate page fault and page free events.
One interpretation of when EXPORT_SYMBOL is suitable is when it is
exporting stable and generic leaf functionality. The
devm_memremap_pages() facility continues to see expanding use cases,
peer-to-peer DMA being the most recent, with no clear end date when it
will stop attracting reworks and semantic changes. It is not suitable to
export devm_memremap_pages() as a stable 3rd party driver API due to the
fact that it is still changing and manipulates core behavior. Moreover,
it is not in the best interest of the long term development of the core
memory management subsystem to permit any external driver to effectively
define its own system-wide memory management policies with no
encouragement to engage with upstream.
I am also concerned that HMM was designed in a way to minimize further
engagement with the core-MM. That, with these hooks in place,
device-drivers are free to implement their own policies without much
consideration for whether and how the core-MM could grow to meet that
need. Going forward not only should HMM be EXPORT_SYMBOL_GPL, but the
core-MM should be allowed the opportunity and stimulus to change and
address these new use cases as first class functionality.
Original changelog:
hmm_devmem_add(), and hmm_devmem_add_resource() duplicated
devm_memremap_pages() and are now simple now wrappers around the core
facility to inject a dev_pagemap instance into the global pgmap_radix and
hook page-idle events. The devm_memremap_pages() interface is base
infrastructure for HMM. HMM has more and deeper ties into the kernel
memory management implementation than base ZONE_DEVICE which is itself a
EXPORT_SYMBOL_GPL facility.
Originally, the HMM page structure creation routines copied the
devm_memremap_pages() code and reused ZONE_DEVICE. A cleanup to unify the
implementations was discussed during the initial review:
http://lkml.iu.edu/hypermail/linux/kernel/1701.2/00812.html Recent work to
extend devm_memremap_pages() for the peer-to-peer-DMA facility enabled
this cleanup to move forward.
In addition to the integration with devm_memremap_pages() HMM depends on
other GPL-only symbols:
mmu_notifier_unregister_no_release
percpu_ref
region_intersects
__class_create
It goes further to consume / indirectly expose functionality that is not
exported to any other driver:
alloc_pages_vma
walk_page_range
HMM is derived from devm_memremap_pages(), and extends deep core-kernel
fundamentals. Similar to devm_memremap_pages(), mark its entry points
EXPORT_SYMBOL_GPL().
[logang@deltatee.com: PCI/P2PDMA: match interface changes to devm_memremap_pages()]
Link: http://lkml.kernel.org/r/20181130225911.2900-1-logang@deltatee.com
Link: http://lkml.kernel.org/r/154275560565.76910.15919297436557795278.stgit@dwillia2-desk3.amr.corp.intel.com
Signed-off-by: Dan Williams <dan.j.williams@intel.com>
Signed-off-by: Logan Gunthorpe <logang@deltatee.com>
Reviewed-by: Christoph Hellwig <hch@lst.de>
Cc: Logan Gunthorpe <logang@deltatee.com>
Cc: "Jérôme Glisse" <jglisse@redhat.com>
Cc: Balbir Singh <bsingharora@gmail.com>,
Cc: Michal Hocko <mhocko@suse.com>
Cc: Benjamin Herrenschmidt <benh@kernel.crashing.org>
Cc: <stable@vger.kernel.org>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
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