[net2-wg] Globals/logging

[Razvan Musaloiu-E.]

Hi!

On Sat, 14 Feb 2009, Philip Levis wrote:

>
> On Feb 13, 2009, at 6:58 PM, Omprakash Gnawali wrote:
>
>> On Fri, Feb 13, 2009 at 4:36 PM, Razvan Musaloiu-E. <razvanm at cs.jhu.edu> wrote:
>> ...
>>>> More broadly speaking, introducing global functions raises the
>>>> question of what functions should be globals and what should be nesC
>>>> interfaces. For example, how about Leds? Random?
>>> 
>>> For Leds seems a good idea to have control at fine granularity. I'm not sure
>>> about Random but the local time fits perfectly the definition of something
>>> truly global. :-)
>>> 
>>> To conclude: I though this type of logging would be useful to others. I was
>>> wrong. :P
>> 
>> Clock counter seems as fundamental as node id.
>
> Except that:
>
> 1) It's a function call rather than an enum.
> 2) It's a dynamic, rather than a static value.
> 3) It requires hardware resources that can affect low power states.

Can you please elaborate a little this point?

> 4) It has a fixed precision which not all platforms can necessarily meet.
>

For logging purposes I don't think the precision have to be normalized to 
a unique value. The only operation I do with it is to read it and sometime 
compute differences.

I understand all these four difference but I fail to see why they 
diminish the usefulness of having the clock counter global.

--
Razvan ME