I am diving into how to write a kernel file system driver and I quite of understand what "brelse" function is supposed to do, but I cannot make sense of this abbreviation. Is the "b" for buffer? And if yes, what does "relse" mean? Is it a useless abbreviation of "brelease"?
It almost certainly stands for “buffer release.” While I also find the abbreviation “relse” confusing, it has precedent in an obsolete function from System V that's called “sigrelse.” It is contrasted with a function named “sighold”.