Discussion at Linux Foundation Japan Symposium

[Satoshi OSHIMA <satoshi dot oshima dot fk at hitachi dot com>]

Hi all,

Long time no see and sorry for my late report.

I attended 9th Linux Foundation Japan Symposium and 
discussed on issues of systemtap project with Ted Ts'o, 
James Bottomley and Jonathan Corbet.

In my understanding, they demand the following things:

(1) Follow upstream first

Utrace and uprobe features are currently available only 
on Fedora and Red Hat Enterprise Linux, since those 
patches are not merged into upstream kernel yet.

my suggestion:

To reduce complaints of upstream kernel developers, 
systemtap project may need to postpone adding new 
uprobe features until getting utrace (and uprobe) 
patch set accepted in mainline.


(2) Maintain tapset

Systemtap users (including kernel developers) get 
frustrated because tapsets often do not work on 
the latest kernel. Moreover, sometimes users 
have to fix the tapset incompatibility of kernels.

my suggestion:

If systemtap procjet can fix this kind of incompatibilities
within a few hours or days as Myths about systemtap 
on the wiki claims, releasing new systemtap minor release
tarball for each upstream kernel release would help users.


(3) Make no debuginfo version

Systemtap always requires kernel debuginfo to use. 
Unfortunately, it is hard for users of some distributions 
to have debuginfo.

my suggestion:

If systemtap has a build option to make no debuginfo version,
this complain will be reduced. I know we had had it before.
We should provide it again.


(4) Have conversations frequently with Kernel Community

I understand that Frank has tried to communicate with upstream
kernel community. However, it seems that developers of upstream 
kernel feel it is not enough.

my suggestion:

I know that systemtap is a bit different from other part of
the kernel. Usual kernel subsystem maintainers are chosen 
on activities in lkml. On the other hand, systemtap maintainer's
activities are invisible for almost all of the kernel developers.

This may be one of the reasons of their frastration.
To solve this problem, we should periodically make announcements
of systemtap update and require questions or comments.

To do this, systemtap project might need more ambassadors
for kernel community.

In addition, since criticisms of systemtap occur in events sponsored
by Linux Foundation, systemtap project ambassadaor(s) should talk 
with Linux Foundation people(Andrew Morton, Ted, James).


I hope my suggestion help you to understand the current 
developers feelings.

Regards,
Satoshi Oshima