Subject: Re: [PATCH v2 001/110] vfs: introduce kino_t typedef and PRIino format macro

From: "Theodore Tso" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 3 Mar 2026 10:16:17 -0500

On Tue, Mar 03, 2026 at 05:53:39AM -0500, Jeff Layton wrote:
> 
> Like I said to Ted, this is just temporary scaffolding for the change.
> The PRIino macro is removed in the end. Given that, perhaps you can
> overlook the bikeshed's color in this instance?

I didn't realize that this was going to disappear in the end.  That
makes me feel much better about the change.  I'd suggest changing the
commit description where it claims that we're using something that
follows the inttypes.h convention and making it clear that this is
temporary and only to preserve bisectability.

One question though --- are there *really* places that are using
signed inode numbers and trying to print them?  If people are trying
to use negative inodes to signal an error or some such, the it implies
that at least for some file systems, an inode number larger than 2**63
might be problematic.  If there is core VFS code that uses a negative
inode number then this could be a real potential trap.

So are there really code which is doing a printf of 'PRIino "d"'?  Or
was this to allow the use of of 'PRiino "x"'?

	    	    	      	     	- Ted