Namecache improvements

by Gleb Kurtsov for The FreeBSD Project

Reliable full path resolution for opened files and directories is becoming expectation from more and more software. Unlike Linux, VFS in FreeBSD is inode-centric and thus full path resolution is hard. Namecache in FreeBSD tends to reclaim intermediate directory vnodes and purges all entries from cache on removing or renaming single entry in directory, making full path resolution even harder. I propose to develop a directory cache that would make reliable full path resolution possible.