Improvement request for Handbook section 8.4: adaptive_giant

[Joel Dahl]

On Mon, 2004-11-01 at 15:07, Jan Gundtofte-Bruun wrote:
> However, there is one line, in section 8.4, that sticks out:
> 
>    options          ADAPTIVE_GIANT    # Giant mutex is adaptive.
> 
> This option causes Giant to be included in the set of mutexes adaptively spun on.
> 
> The wording of this line is in contrast to the rest of the document, the 
> description is simply not adding any value. I have no idea if it would 
> be dangerous to comment this line out (to optimize).
> I don't think I need to know why mutexes spin adaptively, but please 
> consider spending 5 words to exlain what a Giant is used for, so that I 
> can decide if I need this. At least, a safe default could be something 
> like "If you don't know what a Giant is, you [should leave this in]/[can 
> safely comment this out]."

I'm no committer, but I submitted the big patch that was used to update
the kernel configuration chapter to match 5.X, and yes I agree, the
description I used is vague. Perhaps someone with commit rights could
update it with a better explanation?

If you are looking for a simple description of Giant, check:
http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/freebsd-glossary.html

--
Joel