Subject: Re: [PATCH] mm: kill kmemcheck

From: Sasha Levin <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 12 Mar 2015 08:51:08 -0400

On 03/12/2015 03:07 AM, Pekka Enberg wrote:
> Hi Sasha,
> 
> On 3/11/15 1:43 PM, Sasha Levin wrote:
>> As discussed on LSF/MM, kill kmemcheck.
>>
>> KASan is a replacement that is able to work without the limitation of
>> kmemcheck (single CPU, slow). KASan is already upstream.
>>
>> We are also not aware of any users of kmemcheck (or users who don't consider
>> KASan as a suitable replacement).
>>
>> I've build tested it using all[yes,no,mod]config and fuzzed a bit with this
>> patch applied, didn't notice any bad behaviour.
>>
>> Signed-off-by: Sasha Levin <[email-masked]>
> 
> Can you elaborate on what exactly was discussed at LSF/MM? Preferably in the commit log. ;-)

There wasn't a long discussion about removing kmemcheck, it just followed up
a KASan topic and the question of whether kmemcheck can be deprecated now
that KASan is merged came up.

No one at the room didn't use it, knew a user of it, or couldn't describe a
usecase where kmemcheck was superior to KASan - so the conclusion was to try
and replace it.

The only thing I can really put in the changelog is a reference to the KASan
docs and to ask folks to complain loudly if we missed a usecase.

Thanks,
Sasha