[PATCH 3/5] block: Document the bio_vec properties

[Bart Van Assche <bvanassche@acm.org>]

Since it is nontrivial that nth_page() does not have to be used for a
bio_vec, document this.

CC: Christoph Hellwig <hch@infradead.org>
Cc: Ming Lei <ming.lei@redhat.com>
Signed-off-by: Bart Van Assche <bvanassche@acm.org>
---
 include/linux/bvec.h | 18 ++++++++++++++++--
 1 file changed, 16 insertions(+), 2 deletions(-)

diff --git a/include/linux/bvec.h b/include/linux/bvec.h
index a81c13ac1972..25295c11b164 100644
--- a/include/linux/bvec.h
+++ b/include/linux/bvec.h
@@ -12,8 +12,22 @@
 #include <linux/errno.h>
 #include <linux/mm.h>
 
-/*
- * was unsigned short, but we might as well be ready for > 64kB I/O pages
+/**
+ * struct bio_vec - a contiguous range of physical memory addresses
+ * @bv_page:   First page associated with the address range.
+ * @bv_len:    Number of bytes in the address range.
+ * @bv_offset: Start of the address range relative to the start of @bv_page.
+ *
+ * The following holds for a bvec if n * PAGE_SIZE < bv_offset + bv_len:
+ *
+ *   nth_page(@bv_page, n) == @bv_page + n
+ *
+ * From the description of commit 52d52d1c98a9 ("block: only allow contiguous
+ * page structs in a bio_vec"): "We currently have to call nth_page when
+ * iterating over pages inside a bio_vec.  Jens complained a while ago that
+ * this is fairly expensive. To mitigate this we can check that that the
+ * actual page structures are contiguous when adding them to the bio, and just
+ * do check pointer arithmetics later on." See also page_is_mergeable().
  */
 struct bio_vec {
 	struct page	*bv_page;