[kdb] Is KDB dead?

[Mike Travis]

jidong xiao wrote:
> On Thu, Oct 22, 2009 at 10:05 AM, Joe Korty <joe.korty at ccur.com> wrote:
>> Hi,
>> Is KDB still a living project?  I wonder only
>> because 12 days ago I sent to this list seven bugfix /
>> enhancement patches, and while I admit none of them are
>> earthshattering, they are all useful and as yet there has
>> been no comment or acknowledgement on this list, nor have
>> they shown up in KDB.
>>
> 
> I will help to review your patches. kdb is still very useful for many
> developers. Although kdb is an open source project, it was initialized
> by SGI, and the maintainers were all from SGI, but SGI can not gain
> any benefit from this project, and I guess at present SGI is under
> some financial crisis, Keith Owen left SGI, and then his sucessor Jay
> Lan left SGI, so it is quite understandable why kdb progressed very
> slow in recent years. I just wonder is SGI intending to give up kdb?
> If nobody from SGI likes to maintain SGI, I can take this over.
> 
> In addition, I guess another important reason why kdb looks like going
> to die is that it failed to be accepted by Linus. Only if a
> kernel-based project is merged into the mainline kernel, it could draw
> more attention and more people would like to join the development of
> the project. This is crucial, but it's the truth.
> 
> Regards
> Jason

Whoa dude!  There's plenty of attention being given to kdb.  But we are
kind of busy with some other stuff right now (hint: hunt around for 'UV').

I'm pretty sure if those patches are well vetted, then they will be
accepted.  Getting feedback from other arch maintainers helps a lot.
(That's a LKML joke... :-)

Mostly the linux merge delay centers around consolidating various debugger
accesses to kernel data.  The general consensus is to have one API for KGDB,
KDB, <ptrace>, DDD, QTDEBUG, Purify, Visual Studio (ouch!:-), etc.  And
there is that security aspect to it all. (again, ouch! :-)

But hey, keep up that enthusiasm!  [and bug fixing is _always_ appreciated...,
really!]

Cheers,
Mike