Re: [PATCH] improve OProfile on many-way systems

[Andrew Morton]

John Levon <levon@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> For example a while ago wli walked right into an obvious bug on one of
> his machines that hadn't shown up during /any/ of my testing since the
> code was merged.

wli is a self-contained corner case.

> > One of my mental checkpoints before sending a patch to Linus is "has this
> > been sufficiently tested".  I don't know how to answer that in this case.
> 
> Me neither. It would certainly be great to have a decent regression test
> suite for OProfile, but I don't have one other than the usual by-hand
> testing I do. Isn't there some STP thing or something at OSDL we can
> get people to try?

LTP would be appropriate.  If it is possible to come up with a suitably
encapsulated testcase I'm sure they'd take (and integrate) the code.

> > In fact I don't know how to answer that in a _lot_ of cases, but if I know
> > that people are using the feature in anger and we're sufficiently early in
> > the 2.6.x cycle then I'll assume that regressions will be picked up.
> 
> I must admit I'm still not clear on when the equivalent of "early in the
> 2.6.x cycle" is going to happen again...

Well, we've just released 2.6.8, so the answer to your question is "right
now".

It seems that the release cycle has stretched from ~4 weeks out to ~6
weeks or more.  But some of that increase could be due to summer and OLS.

> I have no idea when, if ever,
> call-graph OProfile would be suitable to merge.

As soon as it's ready.

Seriously, don't let hypothetical kernel bureaucracy hold you back - write
the code, get it into -mm.  I'll look after it for as long as we think is
appropriate, then it goes in.  As long as it doesn't break existing stuff.

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