Re: [PATCH RFC tip/core/rcu] accelerate grace period if last non-dynticked CPU

Mathieu Desnoyers
2010-01-26T23:55:34Z

* Andi Kleen (andi@firstfloor.org) wrote:
> "Paul E. McKenney" <paulmck@linux.vnet.ibm.com> writes:
>
> Kind of offtopic to the original patch, but I couldn't
> resist...
>
> > +config RCU_FAST_NO_HZ
> > + bool "Accelerate last non-dyntick-idle CPU's grace periods"
> > + depends on TREE_RCU && NO_HZ && SMP
>
> Having such a thing as a config option doesn't really make
> any sense to me. Who would want to recompile their kernel
> to enable/disable this? If anything it should be runtime, or better
> just unconditionally on.
>
> In general RCU could probably reduce its number of "weird"
> Kconfig options.
>
> While I think I have a better understanding of RCU than a lot
> of normal users I often have no clue what to set there when
> building a kernel.

Maybe we could keep them under a CONFIG_DEBUG_RCU umbrella. Compiling
out parts of the rcu options can be useful for debugging purposes, but
I agree with you that end users should not be bothered with that much
options when some of them are "obviously" wanted.

OTOH, I understand that Paul seems to want to introduce new RCU
features gradually, without hitting all kernel users with bugs in newer
features. That's a sane approach to keep things generally stable, but
maybe it is time to set some of the stabilized RCU options to default Y
and move their config to the debug menu.

Let's see what Paul has to say about this...

Thanks,

Mathieu

>
> -Andi
>
> --
> ak@linux.intel.com -- Speaking for myself only.

--
Mathieu Desnoyers
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