From owner-freebsd-current@FreeBSD.ORG Thu Jan 10 01:02:02 2008 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-current@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [IPv6:2001:4f8:fff6::34]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 55C4816A417 for ; Thu, 10 Jan 2008 01:02:02 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from aryeh.friedman@gmail.com) Received: from mta2.srv.hcvlny.cv.net (mta2.srv.hcvlny.cv.net [167.206.4.197]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 3605913C467 for ; Thu, 10 Jan 2008 01:02:02 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from aryeh.friedman@gmail.com) Received: from flosoft.no-ip.biz (ool-435559b8.dyn.optonline.net [67.85.89.184]) by mta2.srv.hcvlny.cv.net (Sun Java System Messaging Server 6.2-8.04 (built Feb 28 2007)) with ESMTP id <0JUE00EJHLJ6IBK0@mta2.srv.hcvlny.cv.net> for freebsd-current@freebsd.org; Wed, 09 Jan 2008 20:01:56 -0500 (EST) Received: from flosoft.no-ip.biz (localhost [IPv6:::1]) by flosoft.no-ip.biz (8.14.2/8.14.2) with ESMTP id m0A11qp0057558; Wed, 09 Jan 2008 20:01:53 -0500 Date: Wed, 09 Jan 2008 20:01:52 -0500 From: "Aryeh M. Friedman" In-reply-to: <20080110003524.GB5188@soaustin.net> To: Mark Linimon Message-id: <47856E80.2000101@gmail.com> MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT X-Enigmail-Version: 0.95.5 References: <478556AD.6090400@bsdforen.de> <20080110003524.GB5188@soaustin.net> User-Agent: Thunderbird 2.0.0.9 (X11/20080104) Cc: Dominic Fandrey , freebsd-current@freebsd.org Subject: Re: FreeBSD's problems as seen by the BSDForen.de community X-BeenThere: freebsd-current@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: Discussions about the use of FreeBSD-current List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Thu, 10 Jan 2008 01:02:02 -0000 -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Mark Linimon wrote: > I appreciate the fact that you took the time to write this post and > raise serious issues in a non-confrontational manner. > > On Thu, Jan 10, 2008 at 12:20:13AM +0100, Dominic Fandrey wrote: >> Even minimal I/O load on a hard disk suffices to lock up whole >> systems. Posts on the mailinglists current and stable have often >> been answered with denial or have simply been ignored. > > The responses on the mailing lists can indeed vary in quality. My > own experience is that many of the key FreeBSD developers respond > fairly well -- when they've got time to do so. Some exceptions > exist. But I don't think any one person is working on amd64 to the > exclusion of i386. Perhaps that is what it would take. > > Other than trying to identify individuals whose responses are doing > more harm than good, I don't have any suggestions here. > >> What we think might be a solution to the regression problem, >> would be the establishing of a Regressions Team, similar to other >> teams like the Security Team. > > Unfortunately it requires volunteers to constitute such a thing. > I've been trying to come up with ideas on how to get more people > involved in what we would consider 'maintainence' activities, but > I've yet to make an impact. A few people have expressed interest > in helping to go through the PR backlog, but the big shortage is > committers who are willing to work with them on such unglamorous > tasks. (I am working on a proposal to at least make it less > frustrating to do so, but I don't want to tie that into this > thread.) > > Having said that, I would join such a team and try to work with it. > > >> PRs remain unanswered or the reporters are told that the >> regressions they report do not exist. > > We clearly have a disconnect on PRs. More come in than we have any > way to handle. This is clearly most distressing when the PRs > contain patches and/or test cases. Again, I'm open to ideas on how > to set up something where more people can participate. > > I've tried to flag certain PRs with '(regression)', fwiw, which is > necessary but clearly insufficient. > >> To solve the performance problems it appears to us, that a guide >> to tracking performance problems or a performance test suite is >> required. > > I think that's 2 separate issues. I had not thought much about > trying to categorize certain PRs as 'performance' but it really > does make sense. I will try to work on this issue. > > There is actually work on performance tests, but it goes on behind > the scenes and is not publicized. (The jump in performance for > most workloads on i386-7 is due to the efforts of many individuals > who have been relentlessly testing MySQL, Postgres, Bind, and other > real-world workloads since the 7 branch was created. Kris, the > other respondent in this thread, is one of the people doing a great > deal of work on this.) Some of this is documented at > http://wiki.freebsd.org/Performance. If there's more specific > information that needs to be added there, let me know off-list. > > There is also the work at > http://wiki.freebsd.org/PerformanceTracker, which I do not know the > state of. This sounds encouraging. > > FreeBSD is mostly driven by individual efforts (we are, however, > seeing more interest from corporations, some of whom see network > performance as a key issue). To some extent it's more > "interesting" to do new work than do maintainance work; this is a > classical software engineering problem. Again, I'm completely open > to suggestions on how to get more people interested in working in > this area. > Not to start a flame war but most of the problems listed in their most general form come down to flaws in the development model (or any other FOSS-like model... the main flaw is lack of rewards for working on what is needed vs. what is fun)... I am *NOT* recommending FreeBSD change it's basic model in anyway (even though some good alternatives do exist) I am just saying we should look at how to reward people for doing unglamerious but needed work. - -- Aryeh M. Friedman FloSoft Systems, Java Developer Tools http://www.flosoft-systems.com Developer, not business, friendly. -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v2.0.4 (FreeBSD) Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org iD8DBQFHhW6AjRvRjGmHRgQRAqlzAJ9gunLn06b5GLS+gamwzASuSCrp8QCfVnni 8a+XCLEOXfu/QwS00ckftGY= =PzL0 -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----