linux-kernel - Re: [PATCH] CCISS: Don't print driver version until we actually find a device

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Message-ID: <d120d5000607270601n74227ccdrb37b965c247c375e@mail.gmail.com>
Date:	Thu, 27 Jul 2006 09:01:36 -0400
From:	"Dmitry Torokhov" <dmitry.torokhov@...il.com>
To:	"Jeff Garzik" <jeff@...zik.org>
Cc:	"Arjan van de Ven" <arjan@...radead.org>,
	"Jesper Juhl" <jesper.juhl@...il.com>,
	"Bjorn Helgaas" <bjorn.helgaas@...com>,
	"Andrew Morton" <akpm@...l.org>,
	"Mike Miller" <mike.miller@...com>, iss_storagedev@...com,
	linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org
Subject: Re: [PATCH] CCISS: Don't print driver version until we actually find a device

On 7/26/06, Jeff Garzik <jeff@...zik.org> wrote:
> Arjan van de Ven wrote:
> > On Wed, 2006-07-26 at 00:43 +0200, Jesper Juhl wrote:
> >> On 26/07/06, Bjorn Helgaas <bjorn.helgaas@...com> wrote:
> >>> If we don't find any devices, we shouldn't print anything.
> >>>
> >> I disagree.
> >> I find it quite nice to be able to see that the driver loaded even if
> >> it finds nothing. At least then when there's a problem, I can quickly
> >> see that at least it is not because I didn't forget to load the
> >> driver, it's something else. Saves time since I can start looking for
> >> reasons why the driver didn't find anything without first spending
> >> additional time checking if I failed to cause it to load for some
> >> reason.
> >
> > I'll add a second reason: it is a REALLY nice property to be able to see
> > which driver is started last in case of a crash/hang, so that the guilty
> > party is more obvious..
>
> OTOH, it is not a property that scales well at all.
>
> When you build extra drivers into the kernel, or distros load drivers
> you don't need (_every_ distro does this), you wind up with a bunch of
> version strings for drivers for hardware you don't have.
>

Given that boot tracing is best done with initcall_debug and
drivers that care about their version string can report it through
/sys/modules/<driver>/version why should version string be printed at
load time at all?

-- 
Dmitry
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