Re: [Xen-devel] [PATCH v5 04/17] xenctx: Add command line options -b (--bytes-per-line) and -l (--lines)

[Ian Campbell <Ian.Campbell@xxxxxxxxxx>]

On Mon, 2014-03-24 at 12:58 -0400, Don Slutz wrote:
> On 03/24/14 06:44, Ian Campbell wrote:
> 
> > On Sat, 2014-03-22 at 16:08 -0400, Don Slutz wrote:
> > > On 03/21/14 10:32, Ian Campbell wrote:
> > > By default only part of the stack is dumped:
> > Why not dump the whole page by default then? 5 lines seems rather
> > arbitrary.
> 
> 5 is what it use to be.  Not sure how much the default in linux is.
> 
> I have no issue with changing the default to MAX.  However I got
> from reading Jan Beulich comments in Nov 2013, that these changes
> should not be intrusive.

I think we are way past intrusive...

> > > It is not that each change makes a big difference, that happens when 
> > > several are used at one time:
> > Can we not just improve the default behaviour to be more useful? Having
> > to give half a dozen different options to get useful output isn't really
> > all that user friendly.
> 
> These are directly in response to:

Please can you get out of the habit of just cutting and pasting emails
in response to questions, it's very hard to make sense of what you are
trying to say when you do this. Just answer the question directly.

AFAICT the answer to my question is that a previous attempt at this
change you changed the default behaviour and this was questioned because
it reduced the amount of information on a line to a non-useful amount.
Is that right? Did you agree with that assessment from Jan? If so then
the right answer to my question would have been:
        I tried this, but it resulted in only two stack entries per line
        which Jan pointed out wasn't very many so I decided to make it
        an option.

If you didn't agree with Jan then did you make a counter argument?

> > I accept that some options might have to remain in order to work sanely
> > on 80-column displays but we should aim in the first instance to have
> > the tool Do The Right/Useful Thing without needing extra options.
> 
> I am currently not sure that "Do The Right/Useful Thing" is the same
> for all the people involved.

It's not a hard and fast rule ("I accept that some options might have to
remain"). What I am saying is please think about improving the defaults
where it makes sense to do so. If you decide that adding a new option is
the right thing to do then 

> Are you asking for some kind of config file that allows a developer to
> select their preferred setting of options,

Oh god no.

> or just to determine the best defaults?

Yes, at least where possible.

> Last I knew Jan Beulich does not what -t and you and I do.  The issue
> is that
> -t by default pushes the output to > 80 columns.

I don't want things over 80 columns either.

I want to know that you have thought about the tradeoffs of adding a new
option and concluded that a new option is better than changing the
defaults -- the obvious way to stop me questioning this sort of thing
would be to explain the choice in the commit message in the first place.

Ian.


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