Messages in this thread |  | | | Date | Thu, 1 Oct 2009 13:08:50 +0200 | | From | Ingo Molnar <> | | Subject | Re: [PATCH 2/5] x86, mce: rename finished to valid in struct mce II |
| |
* Andi Kleen <ak@linux.intel.com> wrote:
> H. Peter Anvin wrote: >> On 09/29/2009 04:04 PM, Andi Kleen wrote: >>> Hidetoshi Seto wrote: >>>> Andi Kleen wrote: >>>>> struct mce is exported to user space. I don't think it's a good idea >>>>> to rename fields in exported structures like this. That just causes confusion. >>>> I don't know any other real user of this struct than the mcelog and the >>>> mce test suite. In other words, I expected that you (Huang and Andi) are >>>> only users who may be confused by this kind of change. >>> Also I should add there are other consumers of /dev/mcelog, not just >>> mcelog/mce-inject. >>> >> >> Details? > > e.g. mced
Am i the only one who finds Andi's reply and discussion methods in such matters utterly unproductive and intentionally obstructive?
Firstly, the initial sentence of:
" Also I should add there are other consumers of /dev/mcelog, not just mcelog/mce-inject. "
Was IMO designed to be as unhelpful as possible, while still making his point. It would have been _so_ easy for Andi to be a bit more helpful to add this little bit of information to the sentence:
"..., such as 'mced'."
A communication style like that sucks on lkml, a lot. It's vasteful (costs time) and is deceptive as well and holds up the technical discussion.
The "which are those?" basic question was to be expected, especially given that mced is a very, very obscure project barely findable via googling around. It's not packaged up and not available in rpmfind.net's vast package repo. So Andi cannot credibly claim a "oh, I thought that's obvious" defense.
Nor is the second (again maximally minimal) reply from Andi helpful:
"e.g. mced"
... which still implies that "there might be others". But it does not tell us what _Andi_ thinks about that. A fair, honest, helpful reply would have been to write the truth straight away, via something like:
" Also I should add there are other consumers of /dev/mcelog, not just mcelog/mce-inject. There's a tiny, still-obscure project called 'mced' - and there might be others although i dont know of any. Granted, for our purposes, mcelog/mce-inject are the main ones to care about. "
And look how such an honest and helpful reply would convey the right kind of technical message, instead of this multiple (and avoidable) ping-pong trying to spoon-feed information which still conveys a deceptive technical message? And that's all just because Andi apparently disagrees with the direction of the discussion?
This lack of basic honestly and helpfulnesss is one of the reasons why i have to ignore most of Andi's mails btw. Such exchanges show the attempt of trying to treat information as a weapon - giving it out conservatively while taking it in liberally and hoarding it. That's very much against basic FOSS principles. It is also very hard for me to trust a person who is willing to hurt (stand in the way of) others with such an ease of mind.
Ingo
|  |