linux-kernel - Re: Follow-up on Linux-kernel code accessibility

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Message-ID: <aa0833a5-01be-4df6-8771-2cd00abac81a@paulmck-laptop>
Date: Fri, 19 Dec 2025 16:36:33 -0800
From: "Paul E. McKenney" <paulmck@...nel.org>
To: Steven Rostedt <rostedt@...dmis.org>
Cc: Sasha Levin <sashal@...nel.org>, Theodore Tso <tytso@....edu>,
	Julia Lawall <julia.lawall@...ia.fr>,
	Gabriele Paoloni <gpaoloni@...hat.com>,
	Kate Stewart <kstewart@...uxfoundation.org>,
	Chuck Wolber <chuckwolber@...il.com>,
	Dmitry Vyukov <dvyukov@...gle.com>,
	Mark Rutland <mark.rutland@....com>,
	Thomas Gleixner <tglx@...utronix.de>,
	Lorenzo Stoakes <lorenzo.stoakes@...cle.com>,
	Shuah Khan <skhan@...uxfoundation.org>, Chris Mason <clm@...a.com>,
	linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org
Subject: Re: Follow-up on Linux-kernel code accessibility

On Fri, Dec 19, 2025 at 01:28:12PM -0500, Steven Rostedt wrote:
> On Fri, 19 Dec 2025 12:59:42 -0500
> Sasha Levin <sashal@...nel.org> wrote:
> 
> > I'd we weary to see complex specs in kernel-internal functions. Those often get
> > refactored and improved. Having complex speccing on them will make that work
> > much more difficult and complex.
> 
> I would argue that having a module describing a complex portion of the
> kernel functions would be useful for not only helping to understand those
> functions, but also possibly making it easier to see how they can be
> improved upon.
> 
> This is one of the motivations I have for modeling the complex portions of
> the tracing subsystem. I'm hoping that I can see better ways to perform
> these tasks and possibly even improve its performance.

If there are 100,000 function-like things in the kernel, and we add 100
lines of comments to each, we will have expanded the kernel source by
some tens of percent.  Plus staleness and/or churn will likely be problems.

Yes, it helped you, and that is good.  But is this really the best way to
achieve that goal?  Better than human walkthroughs?  Than querying LLMs
that ingested the code?  Better than producing external documentation
at the design/code level?

							Thanx, Paul