Linux Plumbers Conference

This writeup concludes our series of in-depth postings about the LPC 2014 microconferences. Thank you for reading so far! Looking forward to an exciting and productive conference in Düsseldorf.

Tracing is heavily used throughout the Linux ecosystem and provides an essential method for extracting information about the underlying code that is running on a system. Although tracing is simple in concept, effective usage and implementation can be quite involved (see this LWN.net article) because of the variety of environments that tracing must handle.

The ultimate goal of tracing is to get as much information as possible with as little overhead as possible. These two requirements are clearly in conflict and different approaches to balance this conflict have been taken by ftrace, perf and LTTng. One of the topics to be discussed at this microconference will be how to better integrate these three differing tracing implementations, for example, using Common Trace Format (CTF) to allow each to read the others’ tracing output. There are also other tools, such as systemtap, which complement tracing, providing more control features, and the kernel may benefit by working more inclusively with them.

Another topic for this microconference will be how tracing could make use of JITted code, given that, surprising though it might seem, the Linux kernel now contains a JIT for the Berkeley Packet Filter (BPF, as explained in this LWN.net article). At the same time, kernel-bloat considerations will generate a discussion of how to reduce the Linux kernel’s current per-tracepoint memory overhead.

This microconference is a follow-on to a Tracing Summit. The Summit will focus more on traditional style presentations, while this microconference will focus on finding and implementing solutions to Linux’s current tracing problems.

(Thanks to Paul McKenney for help with this post)

The LCP 2014 Planning Committee would like to thank all of you that have registered so far for this year’s conference. We would like to remind everyone that the Linux Plumbers Conference sets a limit on the number of attendees, in the interest of creating an environment conductive to planning, productive interaction and making progress towards the solution of technical problems, with focused meetings and exchanges. Like in past years, we are enforcing a hard limit on the number of registrations for LPC 2014.

We are very rapidly approaching our attendance limit, this year faster than in any past editions of the conference. We expect that the conference general registration will be sold out soon, possibly even within a few days. If you have a vested interest in participating in the discussions, please register now, to guarantee that you will obtain a ticket for the conference. To register please follow the instructions on our Attend Page.

As usual if you have any questions feel free to please contact us.

The LPC 2014 Planning Committee and the Microconference Leaders are pleased to announce that it is now possible to submit discussion topics for individual microconferences. In addition, attendees can also propose ideas for BOF (“Birds of a Feather”) discussion sessions.

Before you submit a topic for discussion within a microconference, make sure you look at the list of accepted microconferences for this year, in the LPC 2014 microconferences page, to determine which microconference is more appropriate for your proposal and who its leader is. Microconference leads have an important role as they are responsible for accepting and scheduling discussion topics within a microconference. Please carefully read the instructions on how to submit and manage microconference discussion topic proposals here: How to Submit Microconferences Discussions Topics.

A BoF is an informal gathering held to discuss a particular topic. Generally, these are used for special interest discussions, topics that aren’t large enough to warrant a full microconference, or to solicit specific input on technical problems. Any LPC attendee may propose a BoF session by following the instructions available on this page: How to Submit a BOF Proposal. BoFs will be scheduled by the LPC Planning Team as the conference draws closer.

If you have questions, please email the planning team.

Here is another installment in our LPC 2014 MC in-depth series: the Development Tools Microconference.

A very famous 1986 paper entitled “No Silver Bullet. Essence and Accident in Software Engineering” by Fred Brooks (of “Mythical Man Month” fame) states that although there have been modest advances in the field of software engineering, none of the heavily hyped tools or methodologies has really managed to revolutionize software development.

That said, an accumulation of small improvements made over the past decades has made a huge difference in the practice of software development. These improvements are the subject of this microconference (see the LPC 2014 wiki), and include patch generators such as coccinelle, source-code management systems such as git, static analyzers such as sparse (along with gcc and LLVM), emulators such as qemu, and much more. Come to this microconference to see what additional improvements might be in the offing.

Please join us for a great discussion.

(thanks to Paul McKenney for help with this entry)

Let’s look at another of our LPC 2104 Microconferences: Android and Mobile.

As has been the case for the past 15 years, 2014 was to be the year of the Linux laptop. But thanks to Android, the past several years really have been the years of the Linux smartphone, as well as the years of an amazing variety of Linux embedded devices, ranging from washing machines to oscilloscopes. Despite Android’s long-standing success, there are quite a few topics of discussion, including use of the LLVM compiler, Android on 64-bit devices, dma-fence and android sync, and of course power management of battery-powered devices, including ARM’s big.LITTLE architecture.

We also have a bonus topic put forward by Greg Kroah-Hartman, motivated by the fact that there is still more than ten thousand lines of code in drivers/staging/android. This naturally raises the question “When is all of this Android stuff going to move out of staging?” Greg didn’t specify whether it would be moving into some non-staging part of mainline or whether it would be moving out of mainline entirely, so it could be an interesting and spirited discussion!
As usual for more details, please see the LPC 2014 Wiki.

Looking forward to see you all in Düsseldorf!

Thanks to Paul McKenney for help with this post.