linux-kernel - Re: [PATCH] [RFC] tty/serial: imx: make use of format specifier %dE

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Date:   Thu, 29 Aug 2019 19:19:40 +0200
From:   Uwe Kleine-König <uwe@...ine-koenig.org>
To:     Andy Shevchenko <andy.shevchenko@...il.com>
Cc:     Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@...uxfoundation.org>,
        Jiri Slaby <jslaby@...e.com>,
        Sascha Hauer <kernel@...gutronix.de>,
        Shawn Guo <shawnguo@...nel.org>,
        Fabio Estevam <festevam@...il.com>,
        NXP Linux Team <linux-imx@....com>,
        "open list:SERIAL DRIVERS" <linux-serial@...r.kernel.org>,
        linux-arm Mailing List <linux-arm-kernel@...ts.infradead.org>,
        Petr Mladek <pmladek@...e.com>,
        Sergey Senozhatsky <sergey.senozhatsky.work@...il.com>,
        Steven Rostedt <rostedt@...dmis.org>,
        Andrew Morton <akpm@...ux-foundation.org>,
        Jani Nikula <jani.nikula@...ux.intel.com>,
        Enrico Weigelt <lkml@...ux.net>,
        Jonathan Corbet <corbet@....net>,
        Linux Documentation List <linux-doc@...r.kernel.org>,
        Linux Kernel Mailing List <linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org>
Subject: Re: [PATCH] [RFC] tty/serial: imx: make use of format specifier %dE

On 8/29/19 3:43 PM, Andy Shevchenko wrote:
> On Thu, Aug 29, 2019 at 7:40 AM Uwe Kleine-König <uwe@...ine-koenig.org> wrote:
>>
>> I created a patch that teaches printk et al to emit a symbolic error
>> name for an error valued integer[1]. With that applied
>>
>>         dev_err(&pdev->dev, "failed to get ipg clk: %dE\n", ret);
>>
>> emits
>>
>>         ... failed to get ipg clk: EPROBE_DEFER
>>
>> if ret is -EPROBE_DEFER. Petr Mladek (i.e. one of the printk
>> maintainers) had concerns if this would be well received and worth the
>> effort. He asked to present it to a few subsystems. So for now, this
>> patch converting the imx UART driver shouldn't be applied yet but it
>> would be great to get some feedback about if you think that being able
>> to easily printk (for example) "EIO" instead of "-5" is a good idea.
> 
>> Would it help you? Do you think it helps your users?
> 
> No, it makes sense only for debug where the user is supposed to be
> developer and thus needs anyway to know code base better than average.

Would you go so far as to claim that

	... failed to get ipg clk: -517

is better sometimes than the same message with a named error? I'd say it
is never better and in some cases worse because readers who don't
understand what -EPROBE_DEFER means won't understand -517 either. So
there is net win.

Best regards
Uwe



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