On Tue, 17 Mar 2026 17:30:32 +0100 Laurent Vivier wrote:

On 3/17/26 16:23, Stefano Brivio wrote:

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On Tue, 17 Mar 2026 08:25:49 +0100 Laurent Vivier wrote:

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On 3/17/26 03:40, David Gibson wrote:

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On Fri, Mar 13, 2026 at 07:26:18PM +0100, Laurent Vivier wrote:

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Previously, callers had to pre-initialize virtqueue elements with iovec entries using vu_set_element() or vu_init_elem() before calling vu_collect(). This meant each element owned a fixed, pre-assigned iovec slot.

Move the iovec array into vu_collect() as explicit parameters (in_sg, max_in_sg, and in_num), letting it pass the remaining iovec capacity directly to vu_queue_pop(). A running current_iov counter tracks consumed entries across elements, so multiple elements share a single iovec pool. The optional in_num output parameter reports how many iovec entries were consumed, allowing callers to track usage across multiple vu_collect() calls.

This removes vu_set_element() and vu_init_elem() which are no longer needed, and is a prerequisite for multi-buffer support where a single virtqueue element can use more than one iovec entry. For now, callers assert the current single-iovec-per-element invariant until they are updated to handle multiple iovecs.

Signed-off-by: Laurent Vivier

Reviewed-by: David Gibson

Couple of thoughts on possible polish below.

[snip]

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/** * vu_collect() - collect virtio buffers from a given virtqueue * @vdev: vhost-user device * @vq: virtqueue to collect from - * @elem: Array of virtqueue element - * each element must be initialized with one iovec entry - * in the in_sg array. + * @elem: Array of @max_elem virtqueue elements * @max_elem: Number of virtqueue elements in the array + * @in_sg: Incoming iovec array for device-writable descriptors + * @max_in_sg: Maximum number of entries in @in_sg + * @in_num: Number of collected entries from @in_sg (output) * @size: Maximum size of the data in the frame * @collected: Collected buffer length, up to @size, set on return * @@ -80,20 +67,21 @@ void vu_init_elem(struct vu_virtq_element *elem, struct iovec *iov, int elem_cnt */ int vu_collect(const struct vu_dev *vdev, struct vu_virtq *vq, struct vu_virtq_element *elem, int max_elem, + struct iovec *in_sg, size_t max_in_sg, size_t *in_num, size_t size, size_t *collected) { size_t current_size = 0; + size_t current_iov = 0; int elem_cnt = 0;

- while (current_size < size && elem_cnt < max_elem) { - struct iovec *iov; + while (current_size < size && elem_cnt < max_elem && + current_iov < max_in_sg) { int ret;

ret = vu_queue_pop(vdev, vq, &elem[elem_cnt], - elem[elem_cnt].in_sg, - elem[elem_cnt].in_num, - elem[elem_cnt].out_sg, - elem[elem_cnt].out_num); + &in_sg[current_iov], + max_in_sg - current_iov, + NULL, 0); if (ret < 0) break;

@@ -103,18 +91,22 @@ int vu_collect(const struct vu_dev *vdev, struct vu_virtq *vq, break; }

- iov = &elem[elem_cnt].in_sg[0]; - - if (iov->iov_len > size - current_size) - iov->iov_len = size - current_size; + elem[elem_cnt].in_num = iov_truncate(elem[elem_cnt].in_sg, + elem[elem_cnt].in_num, + size - current_size);

Will elem[].in_num always end up with the same value as the @in_num parameter? If so, do we need the explicit parameter?

@in_num parameter of vu_collect()?

@in_num is the sum of all elem[].in_num, it can be computed by the caller function from elem, but it is simpler to return it as we need to compute it in the loop.

I'm not sure I understood the point of David's comment here, and this explanation makes sense to me now, but it took me a bit to figure that out.

Could it be that @in_num is a bit confusing as it has "in" and "num" in it, but it's actually an output representing how many "in" entries we used/need?

For an element, *ìn_*num is the number of *in_*sg we have read from the ring for an element.

It's virtio semantic, so *in_* means sg going *in* the guest.

Sure, that's fair, and:

For *out_*sg we have *out_*num.

...we certainly can't call it "out_" because of that. My problem is that "num" together with that becomes quite unspecific.

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What if we rename it to @in_used or @in_collected?

The idea was to keep the same name as in the element. But we can change this to @in_used.

Oh, I see now. Maybe let's wait for David to comment, as maybe he was confused by the whole naming as well (my guess at least). -- Stefano