linux-kernel - Re: [PATCH 0/4] add task handling notifier

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Date:	Tue, 8 Jan 2008 14:14:24 -0800
From:	Andrew Morton <akpm@...ux-foundation.org>
To:	"Jan Beulich" <jbeulich@...ell.com>
Cc:	hch@...radead.org, pagg@....sgi.com, erikj@....com, pj@....com,
	matthltc@...ibm.com, linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org
Subject: Re: [PATCH 0/4] add task handling notifier

On Tue, 08 Jan 2008 13:38:03 +0000
"Jan Beulich" <jbeulich@...ell.com> wrote:

> >>> Andrew Morton <akpm@...ux-foundation.org> 25.12.07 23:05 >>>
> >On Sun, 23 Dec 2007 12:26:21 +0000 Christoph Hellwig <hch@...radead.org> wrote:
> >
> >> On Thu, Dec 20, 2007 at 01:11:24PM +0000, Jan Beulich wrote:
> >> > With more and more sub-systems/sub-components leaving their footprint
> >> > in task handling functions, it seems reasonable to add notifiers that
> >> > these components can use instead of having them all patch themselves
> >> > directly into core files.
> >> 
> >> I agree that we probably want something like this.  As do some others,
> >> so we already had a few a few attempts at similar things.  The first one
> >> is from SGI and called PAGG (http://oss.sgi.com/projects/pagg/) and also
> >> includes allocating per-task data for it's users.  Then also from SGI
> >> there has been a simplified version called pnotify that's also available
> >> from the website above.
> >> 
> >> Later Matt Helsley had something called "Task Watchers" which lwn has
> >> an article on: http://lwn.net/Articles/208117/.
> >> 
> >> For some reason neither ever made a lot of progess (performance
> >> problems?).
> >> 
> >
> >I had it in -mm, sorted out all the problems but ended up not pulling the
> >trigger.
> >
> >Problem is, it adds runtime overhead purely for the convenience of kernel
> >programmers, and I don't think that's a good tradeoff.
> >
> >Sprinkling direct calls into a few well-known sites won't kill us, and
> >we've survived this long.  Why not keep doing that, and save everyone a few
> >cycles?
> 
> Am I to conclude then that there's no point in addressing the issues other
> people pointed out? While I (obviously, since I submitted the patch disagree),
> I'm not certain how others feel. My main point for disagreement here is (I'm
> sorry to repeat this) that as long as certain code isn't allowed into the kernel
> I think it is not unreasonable to at least expect the kernel to provide some
> fundamental infrastructure that can be used for those (supposedly
> unacceptable) bits. All I did here was utilizing the base infrastructure I want
> added to clean up code that appeared pretty ad-hoc.
> 

Ah.  That's a brand new requirement.

The requirement which I thought we were addressing was "clean the code up
by adding a notifier chain so multiple subsystems don't need to patch in
hard-coded calls".

  My contention is that the code clarity which this gains isn't worth the
  runtime cost.



Now we have a new requirement: "allow out-of-tree code to hook into these
spots without needing to patch those few callsites".

I think we'd need a pretty detailed description of the pain which this
would relieve before we would take such an extraordinary step.  What are
those (unidentified) add-on features doing at present?  Patching calls into
fork.c/exec.c/exit.c?
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