Re: 2.4.16 & OOM killer screw up (fwd)

Daniel Phillips (phillips@bonn-fries.net)
Tue, 11 Dec 2001 16:27:23 +0100


On December 11, 2001 03:23 pm, Andrea Arcangeli wrote:
> As said I wrote some documentation on the VM for my last speech at the
> one of the most important italian linux events, it explains the basic
> design. It should be published on their webside as soon as I find the
> time to send them the slides. I can post a link once it will be online.

Why not also post the whole thing as an email, right here?

> It shoud allow non VM-developers to understand the logic behind the VM
> algorithm, but understanding those slides it's far from allowing anyone
> to hack the VM.

It's a start.

> I _totally_ agree with Linus when he said "real world is totally
> dominated by the implementation details".

Linus didn't say anything about not documenting the implementation details,
nor did he say anything about not documenting in general.

> For developers the real freedom is the code, not the documentation and
> the code is there. And I think it's much easier to understand the
> current code (ok I'm biased, but still I believe for outsiders it's
> simpler).

Judging by the number of complaints, it's not easy enough. I know that,
personally, decoding your vm is something that's always on my 'things I could
do if I didn't have a lot of other things to do' list. So far, only Linus,
Marcelo, Andrew and maybe Rik seem to have made the investment. You'd have a
lot more helpers by now if you gave just a little higher priority to
documentation

--
Daniel
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