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* [PATCH 1/1] Add documentation for proper usage and order of preference of calls to print diagnostic messages.
@ 2014-03-04 11:48 yogesh
  2014-03-04 13:39 ` Levente Kurusa
  0 siblings, 1 reply; 5+ messages in thread
From: yogesh @ 2014-03-04 11:48 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: LKML; +Cc: Joe Perches, Levente Kurusa

This patch adds documentation that clarifies the use of various diagnostic printing messages. It shows the preference of subsystem_dbg calls to dev_dbg (whenever possible), as the first preferred format of logging debug messages.
Signed-off-by: Yogesh Chaudhari <mr.yogesh@gmail.com>
---
 Documentation/CodingStyle | 14 ++++++++++++++
 1 file changed, 14 insertions(+)

diff --git a/Documentation/CodingStyle b/Documentation/CodingStyle
index 7fe0546..9e0de25 100644
--- a/Documentation/CodingStyle
+++ b/Documentation/CodingStyle
@@ -662,6 +662,20 @@ and driver, and are tagged with the right level:  dev_err(), dev_warn(),
 dev_info(), and so forth.  For messages that aren't associated with a
 particular device, <linux/printk.h> defines pr_debug() and pr_info().
 
+If the subsystem has its own diagnostic macros then they should be used
+instead of dev_dbg calls.
+e.g. If you are using network subsystem, use netdev_dbg;
+if you are using V4L, use v4l_dbg etc.
+This standardises the output format in every subsystem.
+
+Depending on your changes, the following order of precedence
+applies to printing messages:
+1. [subsystem]_dbg() is preferred when you the
+subsystem has its own diagnostic macros.
+2. dev_dbg() is preferred when you have a generic struct device object.
+3. pr_debug() is used when 1 and 2 above are not applicable.
+4. printk() should be avoided.
+
 Coming up with good debugging messages can be quite a challenge; and once
 you have them, they can be a huge help for remote troubleshooting.  Such
 messages should be compiled out when the DEBUG symbol is not defined (that

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Thread overview: 5+ messages (download: mbox.gz follow: Atom feed
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2014-03-04 11:48 [PATCH 1/1] Add documentation for proper usage and order of preference of calls to print diagnostic messages yogesh
2014-03-04 13:39 ` Levente Kurusa
2014-03-04 14:31   ` yogesh
2014-03-04 14:50     ` Levente Kurusa
2014-03-04 16:27     ` Randy Dunlap

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