[HN Gopher] A Discussion on Printk()
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A Discussion on Printk()
Author : signa11
Score : 45 points
Date : 2022-10-08 12:43 UTC (10 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (lwn.net)
(TXT) w3m dump (lwn.net)
| jpfr wrote:
| The worst part wasn't Linus rejecting the patch (rightly imho),
| but him dismissing RT as a small enthusiast's project. There's a
| huge industry depending on this. Like industrial control's, etc.
|
| For context, here is the rebase of the RT patch set on top of the
| current Linux release.
|
| https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/rt/linux-rt-...
|
| The list used to be much much longer. A lot of work is already in
| the mainline. It remains - printk -
| scheduler - small fry / driver fixes
|
| Though RT will require constant "gardening" also after being
| fully mainlined. There's an ongoing push to educate kernel devs
| how to not break RT in the future.
| avl999 wrote:
| The article links to this PR comment by Linus
| https://lwn.net/ml/linux-kernel/CAHk-=wie+VC-R5=Hm=Vrg5PLrJx... :
|
| > End result: no way will I accept this kind of completely
| arbitrary and frankly not very intelligent patch.
|
| > If people want to disable console printing, that's THEIR
| CHOICE. It could be a new config variable where you ASK people
| about what they want. Not this kind of idiotic tying together of
| things.
|
| I thought Linus had committed to changing how he behaves in
| public forums? Even if he didn't like the patch, calling it
| "unintelligent" and "idiotic" doesn't accomplish anything. He
| could have just left the rest of the comments in there without
| using inflammatory language and it would have the same affect.
| raverbashing wrote:
| The whole feedback is much more balanced than just picking up
| some random word from the text. 'idiotic' refers to the way the
| implementation behaves
|
| And yes, "not very intelligent" is a good description
| stjohnswarts wrote:
| I think that is so firmly built in it will never change. I
| don't think he believes that email dev lists should be a safe
| space. I think for quite a while he curtailed it over the hubub
| over those social responsibility clauses or whatever that all
| the big open source groups were committing to a few years back
| when safe spaces and controlled dialogue to prevent hurt
| feelings were all the rage.
| dzaima wrote:
| I think it's important to take context in mind here - this
| isn't how linus responds to every suboptimal patch. If you
| already say "this patch is bad" for many patches with average
| levels of bad, repeating that same thing for something which in
| Linus's mind is likely many magnitudes worse is gonna lose very
| important information!
|
| (an alternative would be scaling back the severity of all
| negative speech, but then you'd drastically reduce the range of
| dislike showable for the much more frequent less severe cases;
| I do think Linus here might have gone too hard here, but don't
| think it's too far off what could be considered appropriate)
| bombcar wrote:
| If your speech can range from -127 to 128 (positive to
| negative) and you intentionally restrict yourself to a subset
| thereof, you lose some of the expressive ability.
| avl999 wrote:
| I reject PRs every day at work with varying level of
| "badness" and it works just fine. Normal people can put 20
| seconds of thought and come up with a response that explains
| why a patch is unacceptable without resorting to name
| calling, even in this PR response Linus does that for the
| most part but in the end just can't help himself from
| throwing in a couple of petty jabs. There are other open
| source communities where this behavior would be unacceptable
| (for example the GoLang core team).
|
| I am calling this out because Linus specifically said that he
| wants to handle himself better in public, he is aware of how
| he comes across and wants to change, it is not an RMS type
| situation where the guy has no self-awareness. Reading the
| rest of the thread I bet he regretted his response esp
| considering the response of the branch maintainer.
| bhaak wrote:
| Note though that he insulted the patch and not the person who
| coded it or the maintainer of the branch.
| petee wrote:
| Not much of a difference if it was directed at a patch or
| person - calling someone's end-work idiotic and unintelligent
| is basically saying the same of it's creator...
|
| It might be better than previous language, but it's still
| crass and abusive on some level.
| dataflow wrote:
| I'm sure it's the patch that feels insulted instead of its
| author.
| bhaak wrote:
| If you read the thread on the mailing list, the maintainer
| of the branch took it as constructive criticism and FWIW
| the followup of Linus didn't use any insulting phrases.
|
| It wasn't apparently the first blunder on their part (even
| though it was somebody else who programmed it this way)
| dataflow wrote:
| I'm glad to hear the maintainer has a thick skin and
| takes insults as constructively as he can.
| pfortuny wrote:
| The mail gets posssibly worse (worth reading). A pity because
| there are clearer and more polite waysbto convey the same
| message:
|
| "This is not the way I intend the kernel to take."
| Vecr wrote:
| I think he has a major point though, he says this[0], if a
| desktop user or kernel dev tries RT how exactly are they going
| to use their system? I don't think I could even boot my system
| with no console output.
|
| [0]: For all we know, there may be random users who are playing
| around with PREEMPT_RT. They don't _have_ to, but they want to.
|
| Just saying "you get no console because you wanted to try it
| out" is simply not acceptable.
| avl999 wrote:
| There is nothing wrong with rejecting the patch... there is
| something definitely wrong with calling it "unintelligent"
| and "idiotic". Esp since a year or two ago Linus publicly
| committed to toning down some of his more toxic behavior.
| elcritch wrote:
| Overall I believe his language has gotten better. Yes it's
| still a bit abrasive but he's also not directly calling people
| themselves an idiot, which is a big improvement.
|
| Reading through the whole PR comment, you see that this is a
| repeating pattern in the printk system:
|
| > And guys, I want to make it really clear how disappointed I
| am with > the printk tree lately. There seems to be some kind
| of hardline > religious fervor having taken over to make these
| kinds of "this is how > it has to be done, screw any sanity or
| common sense".
|
| As an end user who recently used printk with PREEMPT_RT to
| debug a driver, I appreciate Torvald's insistence here.
|
| > Even if he didn't like the patch, calling it "unintelligent"
| and "idiotic" doesn't accomplish anything.
|
| Perhaps not, or perhaps it's an effective way to snap people
| out of a "religious fervor". As a developer I'd be upset at
| having my code called "idiotic", but would generally prefer it
| over someone thinking the code is idiotic but not saying it and
| getting stonewalled or hiding behind corporate doublespeak.
| stjohnswarts wrote:
| If I can do it, he can do it. Someone as clever as him could
| write a filter/plugin if nothing else to flag messages with
| too many curse words and personal attacks.
| lmb wrote:
| Counter point from Gleixner which is worth reading for us in
| the peanut gallery: https://lwn.net/ml/linux-
| kernel/87r11qp63n.ffs@tglx/
| jokabrink wrote:
| In the article, Gleixner is quoted to have said this: "printk()
| is the last thing I am going to clean up [...]. Then I am going
| to hand over to young people [...]."
|
| Does he imply to step back (as a maintainer) from active kernel
| work in the near future?
| usr1106 wrote:
| Could have been a joke, as they occur a lot referring to the
| relatively high age of many kernel developers (greybeards).
|
| Could have been irony that cleaning up printk() will still take
| many years.
|
| Could have been a serious announcement.
|
| Who knows?
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