Re: [PATCH 4/4] tracing, page-allocator: Add a postprocessing script for page-allocator-related ftrace events

Andrew Morton
2009-08-04T20:19:31Z

On Tue, 4 Aug 2009 21:57:17 +0200
Ingo Molnar <mingo@elte.hu> wrote:

> Let me demonstrate these features in action (i've applied the
> patches for testing to -tip):

So? The fact that certain things can be done doesn't mean that there's
a demand for them, nor that anyone will _use_ this stuff.

As usual, we're adding tracepoints because we feel we must add
tracepoints, not because anyone has a need for the data which they
gather.

There is some benefit in providing MM developers with some code which
they can copy-n-paste for their day-to-day activity. But as I said,
they can do that with vmstat too.

If we can get rid of vmstat all together (and meminfo) and replace all
that with common infrastructure then that would be a good cleanup. But
if we end up leaving vmstat and meminfo in place and then adding
_another_ statistic gathering mechanism in parallel then we haven't
cleaned anything up at all - it just gets worse.

I don't really oppose the patches - they're small. But they seem
rather useless too.

It would be nice to at least partially remove the vmstat/meminfo
infrastructure but I don't think we can do that?