Date: Mon, 18 Mar 1996 18:39:18 +0100 (MET) From: Luigi Rizzo <luigi@labinfo.iet.unipi.it> To: nate@sri.MT.net (Nate Williams) Cc: hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: CFV: adding phk_malloc to -stable Message-ID: <199603181739.SAA00856@labinfo.iet.unipi.it> In-Reply-To: <199603181602.JAA04404@rocky.sri.MT.net> from "Nate Williams" at Mar 18, 96 09:02:18 am
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> Luigi Rizzo writes: > > > Until you can demonstrate that NOTHING is (more) broken by doing so, > > > > > > I VOTE NO! > > > > Following this reasoning, you will not allow any extension whatsoever > > to the kernel or system libs or other critical parts of the system, > > because you often cannot demonstrate what you ask. > > Actually, we aren't supposed to to be adding extensions to the system or > kernel in -stable. However, some things slip through because they are I would just like to remember that the introduction of slices left a bunch of disk-related stuff broken for a long time (I'd say between 2.0.5 and 2.1), and gave the final shot to msdosfs, which in turn caused some coexistence problems with msdos systems. > required for critical bug fixes and/or necessary to make life easier and > don't affect stability (such as libdisk recently). I talked about extensions, I should have probably said enhancements. In any case, I believe libdisk does not fall into the "kernel or system libs or other critical parts of the system". I agree that -stable must be stable, I am only criticizing the fact that the above requirement for making changes to -stable are too strict and impossible to fulfill (and I hope the maintainers of -stable use weaker requirements). > Broken-ness aside, there is also the appearance of brokeness. Some of > the strengths of phkmalloc for a developer are weaknesses to a user. > There are still bugs fixed in -current which haven't been brought back > into -stable that are revealed by phkmalloc. I've found at least one > new one, but I haven't been able to track it down (yet). Can you please mention where this one occurs ? > The appearance of bugs makes people think something is wrong when in > fact it might not be. Some of the recent kernel messages are a good > example of 'un-necessary' information. Whenever someone sees this > message, the user immediately assumes something is wrong when in fact > it's an information only message. In the same manner, the messages > phkmalloc spits out would only confuse normal users. This happens all the time with all parts of the system. fdisk had similar problems (or still has, I don't know) about an unnecessary ioctl for wd disks. If the problem with phkmalloc is in some verbose behaviour, then just rephrase the messages or make a less verbose mode the default before inserting it into -stable. > Finally, it's easy enough for those folks who *know* how to bring it > into -stable to bring it in. We're not penalizing folks who have > knowledge, simply not enabling it for everyone. I am not speaking for myself. But in this case, I believe there are significant memory savings and performance improvements on small memory systems by using phkmalloc. Unfortunately the owners of such systems are often the same people who don't have the knowledge to make this kind of changes themselves. Luigi ==================================================================== Luigi Rizzo Dip. di Ingegneria dell'Informazione email: luigi@iet.unipi.it Universita' di Pisa tel: +39-50-568533 via Diotisalvi 2, 56126 PISA (Italy) fax: +39-50-568522 http://www.iet.unipi.it/~luigi/ ====================================================================
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