Re: Linux/Pro [was Re: Coding style - a non-issue]

Victor Yodaiken
2001-12-01T17:22:52Z

On Sat, Dec 01, 2001 at 10:05:55AM +0000, Alan Cox wrote:
> > sufficient for development of a great 1-to-4-way kernel, and
> > that the biggest force against that is the introduction of
> > fine-grained locking. Are you sure about this? Do you see
> > ways in which the uniprocessor team can improve?
>
> ccCluster seems a sane idea to me. I don't by Larry's software engineering
> thesis but ccCluster makes sense simply because when you want an efficient
> system in computing you get it by not pretending one thing is another.
> SMP works best when the processors are not doing anything that interacts
> with another CPU.

Careful Alan. That sounds suspiciously like a "design principle", and
true macho Linux developers don't need no theoretical stuff like that.
They just slop that code together and see what explodes - pulling their
alchemists hats over their eyes for protection.

>
> > key people get atracted into mm/*.c, fs/*.c, net/most_everything
> > and kernel/*.c while other great wilderness of the tree (with
> > honourable exceptions) get moldier. How to address that?
>
> Actually there are lots of people who work on the driver code nowdays
> notably the janitors. The biggest problem there IMHO is that when it comes
> to driver code Linus has no taste, so he keeps accepting driver patches
> which IMHO are firmly at the hamburger end of "taste"

"Taste" ? Now you want aesthetics as well as theory. I'm horrified.

Technical content: does anyone know the max spinlock depth in Linux 2.5
?