Re: config PROC_CHILDREN

[Jean Delvare <jdelvare@suse.de>]

Hi Iago,

Please don't top-post.

On Fri, 3 Jul 2015 11:10:45 +0200, Iago López Galeiras wrote:
> Hi Jean,
> 
> The purpose of this option is enabling /proc/<pid>/task/<tid>/children without
> having to enable CHECKPOINT_RESTORE, which is hidden behind EXPERT.
> 
> Regarding its lack of help, documentation is in already in place[1] but perhaps
> that's not clear for the user because as you say the Kconfig help text is missing.
> 
> I suggest adding something like:
> 
>     Provides a fast way to retrieve first level children pids of a task. See
>     <file:Documentation/filesystems/proc.txt> for more information.
> 
> Do you think that's enough?

That's a start, the reference to Documentation/filesystems/proc.txt is
good but I think we can do better. You need to help the user make the
decision. Why should he/she say Y or N? The user should NOT have to look
at an external documentation file if the answer is N. I would suggest
the following:

Say Y if running any user-space software which takes benefit from this
interface. For example, rkt is such a piece of software.

That being said, I am curious... Is this interface so expensive that it
really deserves a separate option, instead of always enabling it? This
seems to be a fairly generic feature that a lot of scripts and tools
could benefit from (starting with pstree I suppose.)

-- 
Jean Delvare
SUSE L3 Support