Re: Discussion at Linux Foundation Japan Symposium

[Masami Hiramatsu <mhiramat at redhat dot com>]

Hi Frank,

Frank Ch. Eigler wrote:
> Hi -
> 
> On Mon, Jan 12, 2009 at 01:17:49PM -0500, Masami Hiramatsu wrote:
>> [...]
>> Frank Ch. Eigler wrote:
>>> That is one possible solution for this specific problem -- rawhide
>>> systemtap users who're unable/unwilling to build systemtap out of git
>>> occasoinally.  (Remember that the recent 2.6.28 breakage took a few
>>> hours to fix.)
>>>
>>> Another solution would be for rawhide-style distributions to
>>> aggressively package systemtap snapshots into their development
>>> streams [...]
>> Even if we do that, we have to clarify which package can be applied
>> to which kernel version. 
> 
> In what way?  There would be one package in rawhide, which should work
> on every kernel version that we've ever worked with.  It would be
> replaced frequently - perhaps every few days.

For example, commenting in each snapshot release note.
e.g. - tested on 2.6.28.

>> I'm still not sure when some bugs reported on this ml are fixed -
>> e.g.  http://sources.redhat.com/ml/systemtap/2009-q1/msg00029.html
> 
> There was no bugzilla report associated with it, but it was fixed the
> same day.

Thank you. I think we should notice that fix to reporters.

>> BTW, more those kind of bugfix are committed, more autoconfs are
>> introduced. We already has 15(!) autoconfs,
> 
> Yes, but as you know, their cost has a benefit: they enable our
> operation with a whole spectrum of kernel versions.

I know that it is so useful for older kernels. However, once the
runtime is merged to upstream, we don't need to prepare those autoconfs
and to recompile systemtap itself.

>> and these autoconfs increase compilation time (this will be avoided
>> by caching the result per kernel...).[...]
> 
> FWIW, on my workstation, they seem to add about a second.

Sure, autoconf compilation overhead may not be so big problem...

Thank you,

-- 
Masami Hiramatsu

Software Engineer
Hitachi Computer Products (America) Inc.
Software Solutions Division

e-mail: mhiramat@redhat.com