Messages in this thread |  | | | Date | Wed, 2 May 2012 15:44:38 -0700 | | From | Andrew Morton <> | | Subject | Re: [PATCH] debugfs: New debugfs interface for creation of files, directory and symlinks |
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On Wed, 2 May 2012 15:36:03 -0700 Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@linuxfoundation.org> wrote:
> > > > The API is stupid and wrong, actually. There is no *advantage* to > > having done it this way - none at all. > > Yes there is, it makes the caller logic trivial, which was the main goal > here in getting people to use it over creating new proc files all the > time for no good reason. > > No one cares about the return value when you create a proc file, either > it succeeds or not, and you handle things from there, you never change > the name to try it again. > > Same thing with debugfs, you only care if it works or not, and really, > you don't even care if it works, as the api lets you continue on if it > didn't just fine. > > These are debugging files, with no set rules on what they contain. Yes, > people have grown to get used to them over the years, but the namespace > in which they work has worked out for itself, and I have yet to ever > hear of any two people wanting to create the same file/directory > anywhere, and have anything fail. > > Or am I missing some subsystem that is having problems like this with > debugfs?
grr, you appear to have ignored everything I wrote. Here it is again:
> > That's the whole reason we have errnos: to report on what went wrong, > > so operators can understand *why* it failed and so that programmers can > > diagnose and fix bugs.
and
> > If well-written code checks the return value (as it should) and then > > propagates an error code back to its caller (as it should), the stupid > > debugfs interface forces that caller to invent an errno from thin air. > > And if that guessed errno is wrong, it is actively misleading!
I would add that an interface which encourages callers to silently ignore programming and configuration errors is not a good one.
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