Messages in this thread | | | Date | Fri, 20 Jul 2007 16:57:33 +0530 | From | "Satyam Sharma" <> | Subject | Re: [RFC 1/4] CONFIG_STABLE: Define it |
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On 7/20/07, Chris Snook <csnook@redhat.com> wrote: > Satyam Sharma wrote: > > [ Just cleaning up my inbox, and stumbled across this thread ... ] > > > > > > On 5/31/07, clameter@sgi.com <clameter@sgi.com> wrote: > >> Introduce CONFIG_STABLE to control checks only useful for development. > >> > >> Signed-off-by: Christoph Lameter <clameter@sgi.com> > >> [...] > >> menu "General setup" > >> > >> +config STABLE > >> + bool "Stable kernel" > >> + help > >> + If the kernel is configured to be a stable kernel then various > >> + checks that are only of interest to kernel development will be > >> + omitted. > >> + > > > > > > "A programmer who uses assertions during testing and turns them off > > during production is like a sailor who wears a life vest while drilling > > on shore and takes it off at sea." > > - Tony Hoare > > > > > > Probably you meant to turn off debug _output_ (and not _checks_) > > with this config option? But we already have CONFIG_FOO_DEBUG_BAR > > for those situations ... > > There are plenty of validation and debugging features in the kernel that go WAY > beyond mere assertions, often imposing significant overhead (particularly when > you scale up) or creating interfaces you'd never use unless you were doing > kernel development work. You really do want these features completely removed > from production kernels.
As for entire such "development/debugging-related features", most (all, really) should anyway have their own config options.
> The point of this is not to remove one-line WARN_ON and BUG_ON checks (though we > might remove a few from fast paths), but rather to disable big chunks of > debugging code that don't implement anything visible to a production workload.
Oh yes, but it's still not clear to me why or how a kernel-wide "CONFIG_STABLE" or "CONFIG_RELEASE" would help ... what's wrong with finer granularity "CONFIG_xxx_DEBUG_xxx" kind of knobs? - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
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