Date: Sun, 10 Jan 1999 00:41:34 -0800 From: "Jordan K. Hubbard" <jkh@zippy.cdrom.com> To: sthaug@nethelp.no Cc: phk@critter.freebsd.dk, des@flood.ping.uio.no, darrenr@reed.wattle.id.au, committers@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: sysctl descriptions Message-ID: <50343.915957694@zippy.cdrom.com> In-Reply-To: Your message of "Sun, 10 Jan 1999 09:24:15 %2B0100." <20940.915956655@verdi.nethelp.no>
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> On a fairly current system here there are 319 sysctls. If each of them > had an 80 character description, it would increase kernel size by 25520 > bytes. I'm very willing to pay that price, especially if I could decide > at kernel compile time whether to include the descriptions or not. So am I. How does the rest of core feel, since phk seems to wish to push it to a core vote? That's actually another area in which we probably have something to discuss. It's nice to have a central authority which prevents crazed abuses of the source tree (assuming, of course, that it's not the authority doing the abusing :-) but it's silly to logjam every contraversial issue behind core, especially since core doesn't really even like having to vote on things constantly. My recommendation would be one of two courses of action for the new year here, either one being fine by me: 1. We let David Greenman, as our previously elected Principal Architect, simply make the call anytime two or more committers (in or outside of core) cannot seem to reach an agreement on some issue. That's not much fun for David, but would allow the kind of quick "let's just get this over with and make a damn decision" resolutions you get in a Monarchy (and why monarchs, in a time when all you had were a bunch of Dukes, Earls and Barons who all hated one another, were such a necessary evil). I also trust David to make the right call more times than not, so it would be fine by me. 2. Let the committers vote these sorts of technical decisions since we can both get a much better "turnout" from committers on an issue (when we're lucky to get even half of core to vote sometimes) and we also involve most those who generally end up doing most of the work. Fair is fair, right? The only problem I have with #2 is the logistics involved - I also wouldn't want committers to degenerate into endless calls for votes and people feeling steamrollered by the democratic process. If we choose such a scenario, we need to make sure a workable implementation strategy exists first. Either way, I'm not sure we should be leaving the tie-breakers to core anymore. We're a good overall decision-making body and I still want us to have a role in deciding FreeBSD's general direction, but I'm not sure that the arbitration process should be held captive by small, closed core-team-only discussions that the core team itself doesn't much enjoy having. Either that or just leave it up to a Solomon figure like David and get these things over with more quickly and painlessly. - Jordan To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe cvs-all" in the body of the message
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