Messages in this thread | | | Date | Thu, 29 Dec 2005 17:41:03 -0500 | From | Dave Jones <> | Subject | userspace breakage |
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On Thu, Dec 29, 2005 at 12:49:16PM -0800, Linus Torvalds wrote:
> Umm.. Complain more. I upgrade kernels a lot more often than I upgrade > distros, and things don't break. They're not allowed to break, because I > refuse to upgrade my user programs just because I do kernel development. > But I'd only notice a small part of user space, so if people don't > complain, they break not because we don't care, but because we didn't even > know. > > So if you have a user program that breaks, _complain_. It's really not > supposed to happen outside of perhaps kernel module loaders etc things > that get really really chummy with kernel internals (and even that was > fixed: the modern way of loading modules isn't that chummy any more, so > hopefully we'll not need to break even module loaders again). > > If we change some /proc file thing, breakage is often totally > unintentional, and complaining is the right thing - people might not even > have realized it broke. > > At least _I_ take breakage reports seriously. If there are maintainers > that don't, complain to them. I'll back you up. Breaking user space simply > isn't acceptable without years of preparation and warning.
The udev situation I mentioned has been known about for at least a month, probably longer. With old udev, we don't get /dev/input/event* created with 2.6.15rc.
At some point in time it became defacto that certain things like udev, hotplug, alsa-lib, wireless-tools and a bunch of others have to have kept in lockstep with the kernel, and if it breaks, it's your fault for not upgrading your userspace.
Seriously, I (and many others) have been complaining about this for months. (Pretty much every time the "Please can we have a 2.7" thread comes up). [note, that I actually prefer the 'new' approach to development in 2.6, what I object to is that at the same time we threw out the 'lets be careful about not breaking userspace' mantra.]
Just a few years ago, if someone suggested breaking a userspace app in a kernel upgrade, they'd be crucified on linux-kernel, now it's 'the norm').
Dave
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