Re: [PATCH 0/8] Suspend block api (version 6)

[Rafael J. Wysocki]

On Thursday 06 May 2010, Mark Brown wrote:
> On Thu, May 06, 2010 at 01:33:59AM +0200, Rafael J. Wysocki wrote:
> 
> > set up that way).  Even without the patchset you may implement a power
> > manager in user space that will suspend the system whenever it thinks it's
> > idle.
> 
> Clearly, but...
> 
> > On Thursday 06 May 2010, Mark Brown wrote:
> 
> > > In the primary existing application this change interoperates very poorly
> > > with at least the current audio subsystem since that handles suspend by
> > > ceasing all activity and powering as much as it can off, which is sensible for
> > > manual only suspends but highly undesirable for opportunistic suspend in
> > > phones.
> 
> > You said that there's no fundamental difference between manual and
> > opportunistic suspend.  It only matters what _you_ are going to use suspend
> > for.  I agree that at the moment it's not suitable for aggressive power
> > management in phones because of the audio problem, but that applies to
> > "manual" as well as to "opportunistic" suspend.
> 
> ...on the other hand there's exactly one existing application for this,
> and that's the one that's most likely to run into problems since it's a
> phone OS and aggressive power management is pretty important for phones.
> 
> Merging a feature into mainline makes it much more something which one
> would expect to play nicely with the rest of the kernel - if it's
> something that isn't part of the standard kernel or userspaces it's much
> less surprising that additional changes may be required to produce a
> well integrated system.
> 
> > You're saying that suspend is not suitable for one particular purpose in its
> > current form, which is entirely correct, but that doesn't imply that the
> > patchset is wrong.
> 
> As I keep saying I agree that merging this is reasonable given the
> additional power savings it brings in practical systems today.  As I
> also keep saying I do want to have some understanding about what the
> story is for dealing with the problems so that people can easily use
> this feature out of the box.
> 
> Like I say, my current impression is that the best approach is for
> affected subsystems or drivers to implement a custom solution - does
> that match your understanding and that of the other PM maintainers?

I agree that this appears to be the best approach for the time being, although
I can only speak for myself.

Rafael
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