[Devel] Re: Naming the "Task containers" framework

[Serge E. Hallyn]

Quoting Cedric Le Goater (clg at fr.ibm.com):
> Paul Menage wrote:
> > On 9/11/07, Serge E. Hallyn <serue at us.ibm.com> wrote:
> >> Quoting Paul Menage (menage at google.com):
> >>> At the mini-summit, and at other times, I've heard the repeated
> >>> complaint that having the word "container" in the name of the "task
> >>> container" framework leads to ambiguity. And separately from the
> >>> complaints, I've seen the awkwardness that people end up with when
> >>> they feel they have to distinguish between the "containers" abstract
> >>> concept, and "Paul's containers" ...
> >>>
> >>> With the hope/prospect of having the framework merged some time after
> >>> the kernel summit, I guess now's a good time to bow to the pressure
> >>> and find some compromise that everyone likes, before we actually hit
> >>> mainline. (Maybe earlier would have been even better, but ...)
> >>>
> >>> Of the various possible names that have been suggested, there are a
> >>> couple that (to me) stand out as good options:
> >>>
> >>> - control groups
> >>> - task sets
> >>>
> >>> The former (coined by Eric during a brainstorming session yesterday)
> >>> seems to capture the enforcement aspect of the framework (sysadmin can
> >>> use it to control the behaviour of processes, processes can't escape
> >>> from groups), without suggesting that it can only be used for resource
> >>> controllers (as some alternative names such as "resource groups"
> >>> imply) and would be a choice that I could be happy with.
> >>>
> >>> Does anyone have strong views on other alternative names (or even the
> >>> idea of keeping "task containers")?
> >> Purely subjectively I prefer control groups, but task sets is more
> >> descriptive about the implementation.
> > 
> > I described it as "control groups" during the kernel summit
> > presentation and no-one seemed to object to that name.
> > 
> > As far as I can tell, the general mood seems to be in favour of
> > "control groups" - no-one else has expressed a preference for "task
> > sets".
> >
> > I think it's more important to express the overall intention of the
> > feature rather than the implementation. Ted T'so (I think) asked at
> > the summit whether things other than tasks could be first-class
> > members of control groups - I said that currently they can't, but
> > people may find interesting ways to conveniently make non-task objects
> > first-class members in the future (rather than just holding reference
> > counts the way pages do currently).
> > 
> >> So I'd have to vote for task sets.
> >>
> >> I like 'task containers', but it really is a pain trying to keep clear
> >> which containers I'm talking about from one sentence to the next.
> > 
> > Right, enough people have said this to me now, and I've seen the
> > awkwardness that it entails - I don't want to add a subsystem to the
> > kernel that's forever referred to as "Paul's containers" :-)
> 
> That's how I've been calling them for a while :)

It works pretty well  :)

> Now that LWN has announced the name rebrand in the article : 
> 
> 	http://lwn.net/Articles/249080/
> 
> I hope we can close the topic.

Sure *now* you tell me.  You had to wait until I provided yet one more
example of how my own preferences can be taken as a reliable indicator
of the inverse of the group consensus  :)

-serge
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