On Wed, Jul 16, 2008 at 11:23 AM, Masatake YAMATO <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: >> From now on, I'll be agitating more to get man pages provided more with new >> syscalls and ther kernel-userland interfaces. That will mean either I twist >> developers arms to write pages ;-), or I write them myself, with help from >> them. I do think that man-pages, if well written, are often sufficient as >> (or at least a very good base for) a test specification. Here's an example >> that I did with the timerfd API, finding two bugs in the process: >> http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.linux.kernel/613442 . I did something similar >> while writing the utimensat(2) man page, finding 5 or 6 different bugs in >> the end, see >> http://linux-man-pages.blogspot.com/2008/06/whats-wrong-with-kernel-userland_30.html > > > And from now on, I'll be agitating much more to report a mistake in > man pages if you, a test case auther, found it during writing test > cases.
Yes, please! Now that I have more time for man-pages, I should usually be able to respond quickly to such reports. > Generally we can expect a test case auther reads man pages very carefully. > Such a person may have much chance to find mistake in man page (than kernel > developers:-) Yes. > If a kernel developer writes both test cases, and man pages, it is very nice. > However, checking each other by independent teams like test case authors and > man page authors is also good. Yes; indeed it is better. An implementer can be inclined to make assumptions about their own code, and then not test those asumptions; implementers are also sometimes just lazy about testing. Having other people involved in testing counteracts those problems. > When I received a bug report about my test case and I confirmed that there > were no bug in my test case itself, I had to inspect both the kernel/libc > code and man page. This is the most exciting experience during working on > LTP for me. > > Once I concluded to send a patch to LKML: > > http://www.opensubscriber.com/message/[EMAIL PROTECTED]/8342264.html > > Once I concluded to report a mistake to Michael: > > http://www.mail-archive.com/ltp-list@lists.sourceforge.net/msg02730.html > > How about opposite direction? > Tracking all discussion in LKML is hard. Yes, it is. > However, tracking changes in > the section 2 of man pages are easier than tracking LKML. If the page > in the section is changed, it may have impact on test cases for the > system call. This is true. Of course, I'm still trying to solve the problem of how *I* find out about all of the changes in the kernel so that the man pages can be updated accordingly. > I hit on a term "the division of the three powers." ;-) Cheers, Michael -- Michael Kerrisk Linux man-pages maintainer; http://www.kernel.org/doc/man-pages/ man-pages online: http://www.kernel.org/doc/man-pages/online_pages.html Found a bug? http://www.kernel.org/doc/man-pages/reporting_bugs.html ------------------------------------------------------------------------- This SF.Net email is sponsored by the Moblin Your Move Developer's challenge Build the coolest Linux based applications with Moblin SDK & win great prizes Grand prize is a trip for two to an Open Source event anywhere in the world http://moblin-contest.org/redirect.php?banner_id=100&url=/ _______________________________________________ Ltp-list mailing list Ltp-list@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/ltp-list
