Matthew Dillon wrote:
> So you guys (core) choose -- do you want 4.x to reap the benefits of
> further SMP development or not? If you choose no, beware that without
> this base cleanup there is *NO* chance whatsoever of any further SMP
> work being MFC'd to 4.x. None. Zilch. It will have diverged too
> much.
I think that we can find a middle ground on this issue. Jordan made an
excellent point in that this ".0" release has had more early adopters
than any previous first release on a new branch. Therefore we want to
take extra care to maintain the "-stable" perception of the 4.0-Stable
branch. At the same time, Matt is correct in saying that the base of the
SMP improvements needs to go into 4.0 now. The PR ramifications alone
would be disastrous if the only place the SMP improvements were
available was 5.0-Current. That would simply reinforce the perception
that FreeBSD is nothing more than a toy for the developers.
On the third hand (so to speak) is the fact that we really would like
to be able to present a stable external interface to encourage third
party developers to develop to the 4.x branch. So, my suggested
compromise is this. Do the MFC now, with the caveat that this will be
the only external interface change in 4.x-Stable. Architect out whatever
changes have to happen, and make sure that the best guess as to what the
interface should be gets committed, then stick to it, no matter how
painful it is. It's still early enough to get away with this, but we can
only "sell it" once, so let's get it right this time.
I've got a fleet of SMP boxes at work, and given the coming instability
of -Current I'd really like to stick with 4.0-Stable if I can, and in
fact I've already made plans that relied on the work Matt's already done
being MFC'ed as previously announced. I could probably justify the
development time to track -Current if the performance gains were large
enough, and in fact I'll probably put a machine or two on it to try and
make a contribution to testing, etc. But speaking as a sysadmin the
advantages of being able to rely on well tested changes that get MFC'ed
on a regular basis for the majority of my machines would be a huge win.
Doug
--
Excess on occasion is exhilarating. It prevents moderation from
acquiring the deadening effect of a habit.
-- W. Somerset Maugham
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