Re: Discussion at Linux Foundation Japan Symposium

[Roland McGrath <roland@redhat.com>]

> As far as I read the wiki, it seems that you'll make a tool to compress
> debuginfo. Out of curiosity, how small would you expect that the tool
> can reduce debuginfo? 

I wouldn't like to speculate.  I plan to just get on with it and progress
quickly to tools sufficient to make concrete measurements.

> (Can we select(edit) how much info the dwarf
> includes by that tool, or just use compressed format?)

I have not made particular plans for anything that would lose information.
But the intent is to take an approach that will make it fairly easy to
write and experiment with new DWARF-transforming tools in the future.

> By the way, if the development will take more than two years, it might be
> belated, at last.

I don't think I understood this sentence.  I certainly would be much
happier if we'd embarked on this work two years ago, but we didn't,
and we have yet to really begin.  The idea that it could take
anything like two years of actual development on this to produce
results seems just ludicrous to me, if that's what you meant.
Unless the effort goes horribly awry, I'll know a great deal more
concrete about it in a month, and the hope going in is to have quite
a lot of it done in two months.

> Unfortunately, we are in a severe situation. I don't mean
> that you give up the effort. Instead of that, I recommend you to run the
> project with target users (for example, kernel developers and systemtap
> developers), do rapid prototyping and embrace their feedbacks. It could
> take more time, but you can continue to attract users and give us hope!

I don't know what it means to "run the project with target users".
The actual tool development is something for DWARF and toolchain
experts to do, and I don't expect kernel developers to devote their
time to that just because they would benefit from the deployment of
such tools (as will many other kinds of developers--this is not
solely for the benefit of systemtap).  Of course the project is open
to everyone who wants to contribute, and of course development of
new tools will be driven by the concerns of their potential users.


Thanks,
Roland