perf: tools/perf/design.txt is badly out of date

perf: tools/perf/design.txt is badly out of date

[Corey Ashford]

I had a glance at tools/perf/design.txt the other day, and it
appears to be pretty far out of date.

Is design.txt a document that you want to keep the current way for
historical reasons [and the up-to-date documentation placed somewhere
else], or one that should be maintained?

I'm wondering if some/all of this documentation should move into
include/linux/perf_event.h

- Corey

Re: perf: tools/perf/design.txt is badly out of date

[Peter Zijlstra]

On Thu, 2010-06-03 at 16:39 -0700, Corey Ashford wrote:
> I had a glance at tools/perf/design.txt the other day, and it
> appears to be pretty far out of date.
> 
> Is design.txt a document that you want to keep the current way for
> historical reasons [and the up-to-date documentation placed somewhere
> else], or one that should be maintained?
> 
> I'm wondering if some/all of this documentation should move into
> include/linux/perf_event.h

Its the ineffiteble fate of everything Documentation/ to be out-dated.
But yeah, that file will be woefully inaccurate by now.

Yeah, I think making perf_event.h more explanatory would be good. But I
don't think we want to go overboard there either, if comments get too
large and unwieldy they tend to bitrot just as hard as Documentation/

Re: perf: tools/perf/design.txt is badly out of date

[Corey Ashford]

Maybe the file should at least move to the normal burial ground for docs, Documentation, rather than where it is today tools/perf.  Perhaps there it would be easier for people to find and correct.

On 6/4/2010 2:48 AM, Peter Zijlstra wrote:
> On Thu, 2010-06-03 at 16:39 -0700, Corey Ashford wrote:
>> I had a glance at tools/perf/design.txt the other day, and it
>> appears to be pretty far out of date.
>>
>> Is design.txt a document that you want to keep the current way for
>> historical reasons [and the up-to-date documentation placed somewhere
>> else], or one that should be maintained?
>>
>> I'm wondering if some/all of this documentation should move into
>> include/linux/perf_event.h
> 
> Its the ineffiteble fate of everything Documentation/ to be out-dated.
> But yeah, that file will be woefully inaccurate by now.
> 
> Yeah, I think making perf_event.h more explanatory would be good. But I
> don't think we want to go overboard there either, if comments get too
> large and unwieldy they tend to bitrot just as hard as Documentation/
> 
> 

-- 
Regards,

- Corey

Corey Ashford
Software Engineer
IBM Linux Technology Center, Linux Toolchain
Beaverton, OR 
503-578-3507 
cjashfor@us.ibm.com