Re: New (now current development process)

Tim Bird
2005-11-04T22:08:19Z

Linus Torvalds wrote:
>
> On Tue, 1 Nov 2005, Roland Dreier wrote:
>
>>Anyway, it would be great to find ways to make big improvements. But
>>I think the most realistic way to shrink the kernel is the same way it
>>grows in the first place -- one small piece at a time.
>
>
> No, I think that's a lost cause.
>
> It doesn't grow by 700 bytes once in a while. It grows by much more, and
> much more often. And we can't fight it that way, that's just not going to
> work. Maybe have something that tracks individual object file sizes and
> shames people into not growing them..

As mentioned at the kernel summit, we're working on it
at the CE Linux Forum. These things take time to set up,
but we have code already for something that tests
the size impact of individual kernel configs, and we're
working on a test to track individual function sizes for
each new kernel (using Andi Kleen's bloat-o-meter).

We're still in process of setting up the test lab,
but we have a number of hardware boards already,
and we're hoping to be publishing size regression data
for the kernel on a regular basis, starting in about
April of next year.
-- Tim

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Tim Bird
Architecture Group Chair, CE Linux Forum
Senior Staff Engineer, Sony Electronics
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