Re: Reducing noise in dmesg output

On Sep 4, 2009, at 6:52 AM, Mark Linimon wrote:

> No one has mentioned the other reason to leave in verbosity: so that  
> users
> who are having problems can file more useful PRs.  This is  
> particularly
> true of video cards (which, as one might recall, is where this thread
> started.)

This has always been an interesting fault-line.

Yes, if you print or log "everything" then there's bound to
be useful information somewhere that can be used to analyze
problems. Approaching this from the glass half-empty angle,
I can see why people value verbosity. It's an easy case to
state: without it we don't know what went wrong.

There's a flip-side and it's one that's much harder to argue
for. Arguments against verbosity include such things as:
1.  The signal/noise ratio is worse which means that it's
     easier to miss the information that is truly important.
2.  You present the user with output that's not even directed
     towards the user -- it's an aesthetic bug.
3.  It introduces performance problems, especially on slow
     consoles.
4.  If it works, it works and the verbosity is unnecessary.

Much more subjective...

As long as we depend on verbosity to provide us with the
information we need to solve a problem, it's really hard to
convince people that we should make it more user-oriented
and print only things that are of value to the user. Which
means that unless developers value the user perspective and
are willing to put in the effort to allow for another way
of obtaining the information, verbosity is hard to reduce.
It's not in the developer's interest. That is, unless the
problem reporting is actually much better if done differently.

-- 
Marcel Moolenaar
xcllnt_at_mac.com