[gmpi] Re: Instruments done, moving on to "Plugin Files"

  • From: Steve Harris <S.W.Harris@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • To: gmpi@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
  • Date: Tue, 14 Sep 2004 09:12:14 +0100

On Mon, Sep 13, 2004 at 07:28:59 -0700, Tim Hockin wrote:
> > >My position (I think) is that metadata belongs in the shared object.
> > >Whether you access the data via open() and read() or you have load and
> > >call a probe entry point is irrelevant.  Probing should NOT be done on
> > >every startup, and I think it is perfectly reasonable to expect a host to
> > >cache the results of a probe.
> > 
> > i don't agree. its not reasonable to expect hosts to know how to
> > parse ELF, COFF, a.out or whatever the flavor the month for shared
> > object files on each platform is. the metadata needs to be placed in a
> > file with a common format across platforms, thus leaving the handling
> > of the shared object file to platform-specific calls (such as dlopen()
> > on posix-ish systems). 
> 
> Well, there are two answers - one is that we build the meta-data as ASCII
> text in the object file, so that it's easily findable, but not very
> elegant.  The other is that we actually incur the cost of a dlopen() and
> probe() call.  As you point out, most hosts will cache this, so the "it's
> so slow" argument holds no water.

But why make hosts cache the metadata for no good reason? If they want to,
then fine, but there will be GMPI only hosts that dont need a metadata
cache. One less requirement for hosts has to help GMPI adoption.
 
> I'm still willing to consider the compromise of "if there is no metadata,
> then you must probe" if I HAVE to, but I find dualities like that to be
> silly and a symptom of design-by-committee.  We are designing with a
> committee, but I think we can do better than being obvious about it :)

Why do you need the duality? Dont provide for metadata in the object file
(it cant do anything that an external file cant).

- Steve 

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