Re: [PATCH v4 1/3] mm: introduce compaction and migration for virtio ballooned pages

[Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>]

On Wed, 18 Jul 2012 20:07:07 -0300
Rafael Aquini <aquini@redhat.com> wrote:

> > 
> > > +}
> > > +#else
> > > +static inline bool is_balloon_page(struct page *page)       { return false; }
> > > +static inline bool isolate_balloon_page(struct page *page)  { return false; }
> > > +static inline bool putback_balloon_page(struct page *page)  { return false; }
> > > +#endif /* (VIRTIO_BALLOON || VIRTIO_BALLOON_MODULE) && COMPACTION */
> > 
> > This means that if CONFIG_VIRTIO_BALLOON=y and CONFIG_COMPACTION=n,
> > is_balloon_page() will always return NULL.  IOW, no pages are balloon
> > pages!  This is wrong.
> > 
> I believe it's right, actually, as we can see CONFIG_COMPACTION=n associated with
> CONFIG_MIGRATION=y (and  CONFIG_VIRTIO_BALLOON=y).
> For such config case we cannot perform the is_balloon_page() test branches
> placed on mm/migration.c

No, it isn't right.  Look at the name: "is_balloon_page".  If a caller
runs is_balloon_page() against a balloon page with CONFIG_COMPACTION=n
then they will get "false", which is incorrect.

So the function needs a better name - one which communicates that it is
a balloon page *for the purposes of processing by the compaction code*. 
Making the function private to compaction.c would help with that, if
feasible.