Messages in this thread | | | Date | Mon, 18 Oct 2010 14:43:57 -0700 | From | "H. Peter Anvin" <> | Subject | Re: [PATCH 1/2] x86: Cleanup TIF value gaps in shift range |
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On 10/18/2010 02:36 PM, David Rientjes wrote: > On Mon, 18 Oct 2010, H. Peter Anvin wrote: > >> The problem is that someone exports something as debugging information, >> then someone else suddenly thinks it's an ABI. I believe the same >> complainant in the past has objected to changing of formatting in dmesg, >> which is equally insane. >> > > It's not insane if there is no other way to ascertain that information. > If it's available through sysfs or debugfs (and, even better, documented > as part of the API in Documentation/ABI), then I don't think anyone would > object to changing a log message. But I don't think all log messages > should be fair game under some general principle if they are being changed > (instead of just extending it) without a compelling reason, such as > technically being incorrect in its present form.
YES IT IS. In fact, it is completely and totally bananas bonkers.
By not pushing for a proper maintainable ABI, you will have an indefinite forward compatibility problem, and when predictably it breaks, you'll complain. This is, however, backwards -- the right thing would have been to say "I need this, this isn't available, I should add a maintainable API and push it upstream", and perhaps add log parsing as a backwards-compatibility solution.
-hpa
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