Well hi, Alex:) Nice to meet you!
I agree wrt to real workloads, microbenches mean very little. Apache might be a good candidate for benching. That's off the top of my head, see below about how I'd love to hear what you'd like instrumented.
My main problem with BFS is that the name -- under the rather restrictive conditions I had to agree to in order to join the Pi Foundation's message boards -- cannot even be discussed. That and it might upset some parents, not to mention possibly confusing some kids.
Let's not doubt that kids will get their hands in the kernel. That would be a poor assumption, if any of them are a bit like we were.
The other reason for suggesting a fork is that the original author has stated that he hasn't got intentions around supporting the work on a broad scale, and I think something which could end up empowering Pi users ought to have someone backing it up. I'm considering being that person. This is the part where my own self interest says "shut up and go home" and I fail almost entirely to listen.
Here's what Con and I talked about: I would fork, change the name, track his work, and then contribute back anything of value. Downstream forkiness, basically. I shield him from support randomization, and that makes this thing supportable.
What I'm getting at: it's a matter of branding. Sorry, I don't use the marketing-department hat often, at least not in public, but here we are!
Also: it's worth noting that I'm a bit of a culture-jammer. Changing the name might have some very funny positive effects. At Apple, when no one wanted to hear about Smalltalk anymore, some very clever people "invented" Squeak. Which of course they'd already invented as Smalltalk, etcetera. But the radar hadn't learned about Squeak yet, and so the balloon sailed away underneath it one more time. Or that's the version of the story that I heard?
I'll take your advice and start experimenting (was going to anyway.) The output of my experimentation, assuming I don't get run over by a bus in the meantime, will be some macro benches. Then we can start talking turkey, no? ;) Anyway I'd like to come with facts and numbers to a discussion like that, rather than conjecture.
Thanks for your thoughtful reply!
I'd like to ask a favour: can you name off some not-Squeak applications (maybe Python based stuff or something?) that you'd like to see some numbers around between the two schedulers? Feel free to reply to me directly, as I imagine this veers away from the focus of vm-dev a bit.
Casey