Re: [PATCH 2/13] ATA ACPI: debugging infrastructure

[James Courtier-Dutton <James@superbug.co.uk>]

Andrew Morton wrote:
> - The new debug stuff isn't documented.  One has funble around in the
>   source to work out how to even turn it on.  Can it be altered at runtime?
>   Dunno - the changelogs are risible.  What effect do the various flags
>   have?
>
>   Having spent (and re-spent) time grovelling through the ALSA source
>   working out how to enable their debug stuff during a maintainer snooze
>   I'd prefer we didn't have to do that with libata as well.
>
>   

Is there a particular debugging coding style that we should adopt for
all the kernel code.
For example,
kconfig option in order to compile a module/section of core code for
debug work.
A sysfs file to then control the debug level for each module.
A debug module option, in the cases where a particular level of debug is
required at module load time, and before the sysfs entry exists.
If particularly fine grained debug control is needed, the module could
have multiple entries in the sysfs to control different classes of debug
output.

One then implements all this debug support code at a global level,
making it easy for each kernel module to make use of it.

With regard to ALSA, we can make it fit in with the kernel preferred method.

James




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