From: "Michael Kerrisk (man-pages)" <mtk.manpages@gmail.com>
To: John Stultz <john.stultz@linaro.org>
Cc: mtk.manpages@gmail.com, David Herrmann <dh.herrmann@gmail.com>,
lkml <linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org>, Ryan Lortie <desrt@desrt.ca>,
Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>,
Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>,
"linux-mm@kvack.org" <linux-mm@kvack.org>,
"linux-fsdevel@vger.kernel.org" <linux-fsdevel@vger.kernel.org>,
Linux API <linux-api@vger.kernel.org>,
Greg Kroah-Hartman <greg@kroah.com>,
Lennart Poettering <lennart@poettering.net>,
Daniel Mack <zonque@gmail.com>, Kay Sievers <kay@vrfy.org>,
Hugh Dickins <hughd@google.com>,
Tony Battersby <tonyb@cybernetics.com>,
Andy Lutomirski <luto@amacapital.net>
Subject: Re: [PATCH v3 3/7] shm: add memfd_create() syscall
Date: Mon, 16 Jun 2014 06:12:03 +0200 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <539E6E93.6070102@gmail.com> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <CALAqxLUDDYhDbU-fa50ZHVe+yOmv0m3aOO3WmGpRrk-cPzsMAg@mail.gmail.com>
On 06/13/2014 06:20 PM, John Stultz wrote:
> On Fri, Jun 13, 2014 at 7:20 AM, Michael Kerrisk (man-pages)
> <mtk.manpages@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> The general notion these days is that a (comprehensive) manual page
>> _should_ come *with* the system call, rather than after the fact. And
>> there's a lot of value in that. I've found no end of bugs and design
>> errors while writing (comprehensive) man pages after the fact (by
>> which time it's too late to fix the design errors), and also found
>> quite a few of those issues when I've managed to work with folk at the
>> same time as they write the syscall. Bottom line: you really should
>> write formal documentation now, as part of the process of code
>> submission. It improves the chance of finding implementation and
>> design bugs, and may well widen your circle of reviewers.
>
> I very much agree here. One practical issue I've noticed is that
> having separate targets for both the code changes and the manpages can
> be an extra barrier for folks getting changes correctly documented as
> the change is being submitted. Reviewers may say "be sure to send
> updates to the man pages" but its not always easy to remember to
> follow up and make sure the submitter got the changes (which match the
> merged patches) to you as well.
>
> I've been thinking it might be nice to have the kernel syscall man
> pages included in the kernel source tree, then have them
> copied/imported over to the man-pages project (similar to how glibc
> imports uapi kernel headers). They could even be kept in the
> include/uapi directory, and checkpatch could ensure that changes that
> touch include/uapi also have modifications to something in the
> manpages directory. This way folks would be able to include the man
> page change with the code change, making it easier for developers to
> do the right thing, making it easier for reviewers to ensure its
> correct, and making it easier for maintainers to ensure man page
> documentation is properly in sync.
>
> Or is this something that has been hashed over already? I do admit
> this would disrupt your process a bit.
It's more a less a FAQ from my point of view, so I wrote this:
https://www.kernel.org/doc/man-pages/todo.html#migrate_to_kernel_source
In short, I agree that the current process is not optimal, but lacking
(a lot) more time, it'd be hard to make any change to the current
process. In any case, I think there's room for a lot of improvement
even without changing the current process. (For example, while I
agree that having man pages in a separate location from the kernel
source does create some barriers, I don't think it's the reason
most developers don't update the man pages. One just has to
look at the patchy state Documentation/filesystems/proc.txt as one
example to support that view point.)
Cheers,
Michael
--
Michael Kerrisk
Linux man-pages maintainer; http://www.kernel.org/doc/man-pages/
Linux/UNIX System Programming Training: http://man7.org/training/
next prev parent reply other threads:[~2014-06-16 4:36 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 50+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
2014-06-13 10:36 [PATCH v3 0/7] File Sealing & memfd_create() David Herrmann
2014-06-13 10:36 ` [PATCH v3 1/7] mm: allow drivers to prevent new writable mappings David Herrmann
2014-07-09 8:55 ` Hugh Dickins
2014-07-19 16:12 ` David Herrmann
2014-06-13 10:36 ` [PATCH v3 2/7] shm: add sealing API David Herrmann
2014-07-16 10:06 ` Hugh Dickins
2014-07-19 16:17 ` David Herrmann
2014-06-13 10:36 ` [PATCH v3 3/7] shm: add memfd_create() syscall David Herrmann
2014-06-13 12:27 ` Michael Kerrisk (man-pages)
2014-06-13 12:41 ` David Herrmann
2014-06-13 14:20 ` Michael Kerrisk (man-pages)
2014-06-13 16:20 ` John Stultz
2014-06-16 4:12 ` Michael Kerrisk (man-pages) [this message]
2014-07-08 18:39 ` David Herrmann
2014-06-15 10:50 ` Jann Horn
2014-07-16 10:07 ` Hugh Dickins
2014-07-19 16:29 ` David Herrmann
2014-06-13 10:36 ` [PATCH v3 4/7] selftests: add memfd_create() + sealing tests David Herrmann
2014-07-16 10:07 ` Hugh Dickins
2014-07-19 16:31 ` David Herrmann
2014-06-13 10:36 ` [PATCH v3 5/7] selftests: add memfd/sealing page-pinning tests David Herrmann
2014-07-16 10:08 ` Hugh Dickins
2014-07-19 16:32 ` David Herrmann
2014-06-13 10:36 ` [RFC v3 6/7] shm: wait for pins to be released when sealing David Herrmann
2014-07-16 10:09 ` Hugh Dickins
2014-07-19 16:36 ` David Herrmann
2014-06-13 10:36 ` [RFC v3 7/7] shm: isolate pinned pages when sealing files David Herrmann
2014-06-13 15:06 ` Andy Lutomirski
2014-06-13 15:27 ` David Herrmann
2014-06-13 17:23 ` Andy Lutomirski
2014-07-09 8:57 ` Hugh Dickins
2014-07-19 16:40 ` David Herrmann
2014-06-13 15:10 ` [PATCH v3 0/7] File Sealing & memfd_create() Andy Lutomirski
2014-06-13 15:15 ` David Herrmann
2014-06-13 15:17 ` Andy Lutomirski
2014-06-13 15:33 ` David Herrmann
2014-06-17 9:54 ` Florian Weimer
2014-06-17 10:01 ` David Herrmann
2014-06-17 10:04 ` Florian Weimer
2014-06-17 10:10 ` David Herrmann
2014-06-17 12:13 ` Florian Weimer
2014-06-17 13:26 ` David Herrmann
[not found] ` <CALCETrVpZ0vFM4usHK+tQhk234Y2jWzB1522kGcGvdQQFAqsZQ@mail.gmail.com>
2014-06-17 16:36 ` David Herrmann
2014-06-17 16:41 ` Andy Lutomirski
2014-06-17 16:51 ` David Herrmann
2014-06-17 17:01 ` Andy Lutomirski
2014-06-17 20:31 ` Hugh Dickins
2014-06-17 21:25 ` Andy Lutomirski
2014-07-08 16:54 ` David Herrmann
2014-07-09 8:53 ` Hugh Dickins
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