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Date:      Wed, 6 Feb 2002 13:59:57 -0500
From:      Garance A Drosihn <drosih@rpi.edu>
To:        obrien@FreeBSD.org, John Baldwin <jhb@FreeBSD.org>
Cc:        current@FreeBSD.org
Subject:   Re: Performance of -current vs -stable
Message-ID:  <p0510140db88729d2a89c@[128.113.24.47]>
In-Reply-To: <20020206091311.A96921@dragon.nuxi.com>
References:  <p05101401b88638b62611@[128.113.24.47]> <XFMail.020206010234.jhb@FreeBSD.org> <20020206091311.A96921@dragon.nuxi.com>

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At 9:13 AM -0800 2/6/02, David O'Brien wrote:
>On Wed, Feb 06, 2002 at 01:02:34AM -0500, John Baldwin wrote:
>>  WITNESS can really hurt.  Quite possibly I should turn it off in
>>  GENERIC now (I wouldn't mind if someone else did that.)
>
>I think it should stay.  Especially as we are not getting much usage in
>-CURRENT.  If we turn it off by default, it should come back on 3 mo.
>before 5.0-RELEASE for testing.  (and yes off for the actual release).

I was thinking that maybe it should stay in the GENERIC kernel, along
with some comment that indicates how much of a performance hit will
be seen if it's on.  "This is desirable for in-depth debugging, but
it does mean that system calls will take three times longer than if
the option is off".  It's good to have the extra checking, but we
don't want to scare people away from running current simply because
they think it will take three times longer to get anything done on
current.

(or maybe even comment the option out, but do leave the line there
along with the statement that "we'd appreciate it if people would
run with this option on, even though it will cause a noticeable
slowdown.").

I do think it's important that we (developers) spend more time on
current, but I think the way I'll do it is to compile two kernels,
one with the WITNESS and one without it.  For much of what I do I
can absorb the extra overhead of WITNESS code, but a three-hour
buildworld will throw my entire "buildworld schedule" off, and I
just won't be able to rebuild the system as often.

-- 
Garance Alistair Drosehn            =   gad@eclipse.acs.rpi.edu
Senior Systems Programmer           or  gad@freebsd.org
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute    or  drosih@rpi.edu

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