[Ksummit-discuss] [CORE TOPIC] cleaning up kthread freezer hell, part 2

[Rafael J. Wysocki]

On Saturday, July 09, 2016 12:31:33 AM Jiri Kosina wrote:
> On last year's kernel summit, I've been talking about why I consider 
> kthread freezer harmful and why it ultimately should be removed. LWN 
> coverage of that session is here:
> 
> 	https://lwn.net/Articles/662703/
> 
> During the past year, I've invested a bit of a time into actually looking 
> deeper into the dark corners of kernel sources to see how kthread freezer 
> is used throughout the codebase, with the intent to ultimately fix all the 
> buggy places. While doing that, I was petrified by two facts:
> 
> - there are a *lot* of places where kthread freezer is used in a 
>   completely buggy (or useless) way
> 
> - one of the obstacles fixing it are maintainers who actually don't 
>   understand the purpose of the kthread freezer (the usual pattern is that 
>   the main kthread loop has been copy/pasted from different code, which 
>   already used freezer, and so disease spreads)
> 
> Therefore I'd propose a v2 of the last year's session; first summarizing 
> the horrible experience I've done on this kthread freezer journey, and as 
> a followup, try to (re-)explain the issue and the way I think it should be 
> resolved.

Yes, please.

Let me know if/how I can help.

> The idea is to get as much coverage among high-profile maintainers as 
> possible, in a hope that this will result in ultimate tree-wide cleanup of 
> the current mess. That's why I propose this as a core topic rather than 
> tech topic, although it might sound like a rather bordeline one.

I guess that first needs to be "core" so it can become "tech" later when
everybody is on the same page in general.

Thanks,
Rafael