cvs commit: src/sys/alpha/alpha support.s src/sys/i386/i386 swtch.s src/sys/kern kern_shutdown.c src/sys/sys systm.h

Poul-Henning Kamp phk at phk.freebsd.dk
Tue Jan 20 12:40:05 PST 2004


In message <200401201445.24897.jhb at FreeBSD.org>, John Baldwin writes:
>On Tuesday 20 January 2004 01:23 pm, Poul-Henning Kamp wrote:
>> In message <200401201234.45472.jhb at FreeBSD.org>, John Baldwin writes:
>> >On Monday 19 January 2004 04:27 pm, Poul-Henning Kamp wrote:
>> >>   Log:
>> >>   Add linenumber and source filename to panic(9) output.

This thread already represents a prime example of the worst of the
FreeBSD projects social dimension:  The Gratuituos Bike Shed.

On a generic kernel, this change adds 32088 non-executed bytes of
text-segment to i386/GENERIC.

For reference this 0.5% of the kernel and 12% of the size of the
ACPI module.

The email generated by this bike-shed however, has already occupied
more disk-space on my computers than the kernel change ever will,
and chances are that we have not even seen the tip of that iceberg.

May I kindly remind you all that even if one person doesn't find
that it adds anything to his already trained skills as a debugger,
it does make life easier for other less gifted people in our project,
or God forbid: actual users who may try to report a problem.

And yes, we can do much better, tracebacks would be a great start,
better panics also a great thing.

And no, this does not solve the mid-east crisis, but it is still
an improvement, even for me:  If I save 1 minute because I do not
have to hunt for the panic in the first place, then that is one
minute more I can spend on the code.

So if this makes your eyes water, I suggest you comment it out in
your local source tree and pop in on the next meeting in your
local user-group for some much needed perspective.

Poul-Henning

-- 
Poul-Henning Kamp       | UNIX since Zilog Zeus 3.20
phk at FreeBSD.ORG         | TCP/IP since RFC 956
FreeBSD committer       | BSD since 4.3-tahoe    
Never attribute to malice what can adequately be explained by incompetence.


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