mm: simplify vma merge structure and expand comments

Patch series "mm: further simplify VMA merge operation", v3.

While significant efforts have been made to improve the VMA merge
operation, there remains remnants of the bad (or rather confusing) old
days, which make the code difficult to understand, more bug prone and thus
harder to modify.

This series attempts to significantly improve matters in a number of
respects - with a focus on simplifying the commit_merge() function which
actually actions the merge operation - and importantly, adjusting the two
most confusing merge cases - those in which we 'adjust' the VMA
immediately adjacent to the one being merged.

One source of confusion are the VMAs being threaded through the operation
themselves - vmg->prev, vmg->vma and vmg->next.

At the start of the operation, vmg->vma is either NULL if a new VMA is
propose to be added, or if not then a pointer to an existing VMA being
modified, and prev/next are (perhaps not present) VMAs sat immediately
before and after the range specified in vmg->start, end, respectively.

However, during the VMA merge operation, we change vmg->start, end and
pgoff to span the newly merged range and vmg->vma to either be:

a.  The ultimately returned VMA (in most cases) or b.  A VMA which we will
manipulate, but ultimately instead return vmg->next.

Case b.  especially here is confusing for somebody reading this code, but
the fact we update this state, along with vmg->start, end, pgoff only
makes matters worse.

We simplify things by replacing vmg->vma with vmg->middle and never
changing it - this is always either NULL (for a new VMA) or the VMA being
modified between vmg->prev and vmg->next.

We further simplify by placing the merged VMA in a new vmg->target field -
whether case b.  above is the case or not.  The reader of the code can now
simply rely on vmg->middle being the middle VMA and vmg->target being the
ultimately merged VMA.

We additionally tackle the confusing cases where we 'adjust' VMAs other
than the one we ultimately return as the merged VMA (this includes case b.
above).  These are:

(1)
	    merge
	<----------->
	|------||--------|    |------------|---|
	| prev || middle | -> |   target   | m |
	|------||--------|    |------------|---|

In which case middle must be adjusted so middle->vm_start is increased as
well as performing the merge.

(2) (equivalent to case b. above)

            <------------->
	|---------||------|    |---|-------------|
	|  middle || next | -> | m |   target    |
	|---------||------|    |---|-------------|

In which case next must be adjusted so next->vm_start is decreased as well
as performing the merge.

This cases have previously been performed by calculating and passing
around a dubious and confusing 'adj_start' parameter along side a pointer
to an 'adjust' VMA indicating which VMA requires additional adjustment
(middle in case 1 and next in case 2).

With the VMG structure in place we are able to avoid this by simply
setting a merge flag to describe each case:

(1) Sets the vmg->__adjust_middle_start flag
(2) Sets the vmg->__adjust_next_start flag

By doing so it turns out we can vastly simplify the logic and calculate
what is required to perform the operation.

Taken together the refactorings make it far easier to understand what is
being done even in these more confusing cases, make the code far more
maintainable, debuggable, and testable, providing more internal state
indicating what is happening in the merge operation.

The changes have no functional net impact on the merge operation and
everything should still behave as it did before.


This patch (of 5):

The merge code, while much improved, still has a number of points of
confusion.  As part of a broader series cleaning this up to make this more
maintainable, we start by addressing some confusion around
vma_merge_struct fields.

So far, the caller either provides no vmg->vma (a new VMA) or supplies the
existing VMA which is being altered, setting vmg->start,end,pgoff to the
proposed VMA dimensions.

vmg->vma is then updated, as are vmg->start,end,pgoff as the merge process
proceeds and the appropriate merge strategy is determined.

This is rather confusing, as vmg->vma starts off as the 'middle' VMA
between vmg->prev,next, but becomes the 'target' VMA, except in one
specific edge case (merge next, shrink middle).

Int his patch we introduce vmg->middle to describe the VMA that is between
vmg->prev and vmg->next, and does NOT change during the merge operation.

We replace vmg->vma with vmg->target, and use this only during the merge
operation itself.

Aside from the merge right, shrink middle case, this becomes the VMA that
forms the basis of the VMA that is returned.  This edge case can be
addressed in a future commit.

We also add a number of comments to explain what is going on.

Finally, we adjust the ASCII diagrams showing each merge case in
vma_merge_existing_range() to be clearer - the arrow range previously
showed the vmg->start, end spanned area, but it is clearer to change this
to show the final merged VMA.

This patch has no change in functional behaviour.

Link: https://lkml.kernel.org/r/cover.1738326519.git.lorenzo.stoakes@oracle.com
Link: https://lkml.kernel.org/r/4dfe60f1419d55e5d0516f56349695d73a57184c.1738326519.git.lorenzo.stoakes@oracle.com
Signed-off-by: Lorenzo Stoakes <lorenzo.stoakes@oracle.com>
Reviewed-by: Vlastimil Babka <vbabka@suse.cz>
Cc: Jann Horn <jannh@google.com>
Cc: Liam Howlett <liam.howlett@oracle.com>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>

1 files changed, 1 insertions, 1 deletions

diff --git a/mm/mmap.c b/mm/mmap.c
index cda01071c7b1..6401a1d73f4a 100644
--- a/mm/mmap.c
+++ b/mm/mmap.c
@@ -1707,7 +1707,7 @@ int relocate_vma_down(struct vm_area_struct *vma, unsigned long shift)
 	/*
 	 * cover the whole range: [new_start, old_end)
 	 */
-	vmg.vma = vma;
+	vmg.middle = vma;
 	if (vma_expand(&vmg))
 		return -ENOMEM;