[dm-devel] [PATCH] nvme: allow ANA support to be independent of native multipathing

[Christoph Hellwig]

On Thu, Nov 15, 2018 at 12:46:05PM -0500, Mike Snitzer wrote:
> Whether or not ANA is present is a choice of the target implementation;
> the host (and whether it supports multipathing) has _zero_ influence on
> this.  If the target declares a path as 'inaccessible' the path _is_
> inaccessible to the host.  As such, ANA support should be functional
> even if native multipathing is not.
> 
> Introduce ability to always re-read ANA log page as required due to ANA
> error and make current ANA state available via sysfs -- even if native
> multipathing is disabled on the host (e.g. nvme_core.multipath=N).

The first part I could see, but I still want to make it conditional
in some way as nvme is going into deeply embedded setups, and I don't
want to carry the weight of the ANA code around for everyone.

The second I fundamentally disagree with.  And even if you found agreement
it would have to be in a separate patch as it is a separate feature.