Andrew Morton wrote: > On Mon, 4 Feb 2008 20:11:03 -0800 Phil Oester <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > >> On Mon, Feb 04, 2008 at 07:27:53PM -0800, Linus Torvalds wrote: >>> kgdb? Not so interesting. We have many more hard problems happening at >>> user sites, not in developer hands. >> FWIW, I'm not a fulltime developer by any means, but on occasion >> I have fixed a few bugs in the netfilter area of the kernel. >> And in almost all cases, I used kgdb in my debugging and testing > > ^^^^^^^ >> of fixes. > > yup.
I can also underline this - and add the aspect that a kernel debugger may also nicely serve to explore tricky code paths interactively. This specifically can lower the entrance barrier to complex kernel subsystems for new developers/bug hunters. With the latest changes, now all available through Jason's git repos for 2.6.25, kgdb should be usable again ("Now even more stable than ever!" ;) ). It became much less invasive towards critical code paths during recent rounds of refactoring, so we can hopefully meet the requirements for merging it upstream soon (2.6.26?). While too many people consider a debugger as _the_ tool for kernel development, which it clearly isn't, it remains a fairly useful feature, and I don't see any regression, technically or organizationally, it may introduce to Linux. IMHO, it would be a pity if kgdb have to remain out off tree and may potentially fall back at quality levels that many of us had fought with in the past. Jan -- Siemens AG, Corporate Technology, CT SE 2 Corporate Competence Center Embedded Linux -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/