Duh. This sounds like there would finally have been a valid use of the
i_dentry list that I removed.
I suspect that it might be more straightforward to just re-instate the
i_dentry list. The reason I removed it was not because the i_dentry list
was evil in itself, it was that nobody used it and I prefer trying to
remove features that nobody uses because otherwise they tend to become
barnacles over time.
(Yes, technically smbfs actually _did_ use it, but that particular use was
more of a "mis-use" than anything else - because it didn't handle the
aliasing problem. Your suggested use is exactly _because_ of the aliasing
problem, not in spite of it).
Let nobody call me inflexible: I was probably wrong, and if you want to
re-instate i_dentry you should go right ahead, Bill..
Linus