Re: [RFC PATCH v2 0/5] Paravirt Scheduling (Dynamic vcpu priority management)

[Mathieu Desnoyers <mathieu.desnoyers@efficios.com>]

On 2024-07-12 12:24, Joel Fernandes wrote:
> On Fri, Jul 12, 2024 at 10:09 AM Mathieu Desnoyers
> <mathieu.desnoyers@efficios.com> wrote:
[...]
>>>
>>> Steven Rostedt told me, what we instead need is a tracepoint callback in a
>>> driver, that does the boosting.
>>
>> I utterly dislike changing the system behavior through tracepoints. They were
>> designed to observe the system, not modify its behavior. If people start abusing
>> them, then subsystem maintainers will stop adding them. Please don't do that.
>> Add a notifier or think about integrating what you are planning to add into the
>> driver instead.
> 
> Well, we do have "raw" tracepoints not accessible from userspace, so
> you're saying even those are off limits for adding callbacks?

Yes. Even the "raw" tracepoints were designed as an "observation only"
API. Using them in lieu of notifiers is really repurposing them for
something they were not meant to do.

Just in terms of maintainability at the caller site, we should be
allowed to consider _all_ tracepoints as mostly exempt from side-effects
outside of the data structures within the attached tracers. This is not
true anymore if they are repurposed as notifiers.

Thanks,

Mathieu

-- 
Mathieu Desnoyers
EfficiOS Inc.
https://www.efficios.com