On Sep 21, 2009, at 1:02 PM, tlaro...@polynum.com wrote:
On Mon, Sep 21, 2009 at 09:22:56AM -0700, ron minnich wrote:
2.7M lines last year
10K lines added a day.
5K lines deleted per day.
I keep thinking this can't be sustained. What happens next?
Are there stats indicating where the lines are added? If this is new
hardware (drivers), the accumulation is not a problem---if the API
stays
stable; if one needs to rework all the drivers because the API does
not
stabilized...
The only time I had to dive in the Linux kernel code, I was
disappointed
by the "entropy" of the style and ended grep'ing or awk'ing all around
to extract a (partial) list of PCI identifiers and drivers. (This was
long ago now. 2002 ?)
I wonder if a software project will some day be an example of a black
hole: collapsing from its own size, the work needed to just make it
work
being greater than the resources available and the gain to have it
work; and the inability to understand the whole (too much, too long)
resulting in the impossibility to evolve...
I wouldn't doubt it, it's a monolithic kernel, It's bound to get too
large, At one of Googles recent conferences one the the Linux guys
said along the lines of, If your codes outside of the kernel, get it
in there. So... building everything into the kernel. Where have I
heard that was a terrible thing to do... oh yes, everywhere.
A software black-hole certainly seems to be possible. I can't help but
question, how good a Monolithic kernel is if you can't maintain it any
longer.
--
Thierry Laronde (Alceste) <tlaronde +AT+ polynum +dot+ com>
http://www.kergis.com/
Key fingerprint = 0FF7 E906 FBAF FE95 FD89 250D 52B1 AE95 6006 F40C
