linux-kernel - Re: [PATCH] Combine instrumentation menus in kernel/Kconfig.instrumentation

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Date:	Tue, 18 Sep 2007 21:06:28 -0400
From:	Mathieu Desnoyers <mathieu.desnoyers@...ymtl.ca>
To:	Valdis.Kletnieks@...edu
Cc:	Andrew Morton <akpm@...ux-foundation.org>,
	Randy Dunlap <randy.dunlap@...cle.com>,
	linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org
Subject: Re: [PATCH] Combine instrumentation menus in kernel/Kconfig.instrumentation

* Valdis.Kletnieks@...edu (Valdis.Kletnieks@...edu) wrote:
> On Tue, 18 Sep 2007 17:12:59 EDT, Mathieu Desnoyers said:
> 
> > +++ linux-2.6-lttng/kernel/Kconfig.instrumentation	2007-09-18 13:18:17.000
> 000000 -0400
> > @@ -0,0 +1,40 @@
> > +menuconfig INSTRUMENTATION
> > +	bool "Instrumentation Support"
> > +	default y
> > +	---help---
> > +	  Say Y here to get to see options related to performance measurement,
> > +	  debugging, and testing. This option alone does not add any kernel code.
> > +
> > +	  If you say N, all options in this submenu will be skipped and disabled.
> 
> OK, I'll bite - given the mention of 'debugging' there, do we want to go for
> broke and *also* suck in the 'Kernel Hacking' menu as well?

Instrumentation primarity aims at debugging user-space applications by
giving the ability to extract information across execution layers, hence
being a feature useful to users, not only kernel hackers. Therefore I
strongly doubt that it belongs to the kernel hacking submenu. It today's
world, where we face complex user-space problems involving
multithreaded, multiprocesses applications, the kernel and
hypervisors, running on many cores, this kind of tool has proven useful
to many, not only kernel developers. Please have a look at the
papers (especially the OLS2007 paper) linked on http://ltt.polymtl.ca as a
starting point if you are intereted in the question.

But yes, it can also be useful to kernel debugging, amongst other
things.

Mathieu

-- 
Mathieu Desnoyers
Computer Engineering Ph.D. Student, Ecole Polytechnique de Montreal
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