Re: [patch] Performance Counters for Linux, v3

[Christoph Hellwig <hch@infradead.org>]

On Fri, Dec 12, 2008 at 11:21:11AM +0100, Robert Richter wrote:
> I agree with Stephane. There are already many different PMU
> descriptions depending on family, model and steppping and with *every*
> new cpu revision you will get one more update. Implementing this in
> the kernel would require kernel updates where otherwise no changes
> would be necessary.

Please stop the Bullshit.  You have to update _something_.  It makes a
lot of sense to update the thing you need to udpate anyway for new
hardware support, and not some piece of junk library like libperfmon.

> > Talking with my community hat on, that is an artificial problem created
> > by distributions, tell them to fix it.
> 
> It does not make sense to close the eyes to reality. There are systems
> where it is not possible to update the kernel frequently. Probably you
> have one running yourself.

Of course it is.  And on many of my systems it's much easier to update a
kernel than a library.  A kernel I can build myself, for libraries I'm
more or less reliant on the distro or hacking fugly rpm or debian
packagging bits.

Having HW support in the kernel is a lot easier than in weird libraries.