Messages in this thread |  | | Date | Sat, 3 Feb 2001 02:22:02 +0000 (GMT) | From | James Sutherland <> | Subject | Re: [reiserfs-list] Re: ReiserFS Oops (2.4.1, deterministic, symlink |
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On Sat, 3 Feb 2001, Hans Reiser wrote: > Alan Cox wrote: > > > > > It makes sense to refuse to build a piece of the kernel if it break's > > > a machine - anything else is a timebomb waiting to explode. > > > > The logical conclusion of that is to replace the entire kernel tree with > > > > #error "compiler or program might have a bug. Aborting" > > No, this is a compiler that DOES have a bug. ReiserFS is, as best as > I can make it, for mission critical servers where some sysadmin > doesn't want to explain it to the CEO. There are plenty of ways that > I fail at this, but not intentionally.
Yep. For once, I agree with Hans here: if you *KNOW* the current compiler is fatally broken, the best thing to do is blow up. As hard as possible, as soon as possible. Anything else is just hiding the problem.
(snip) > My design objective in ReiserFS is not to say that it wasn't my fault > they had that bug because they are so ignorant about a filesystem that > really isn't very important to them unless it screws up. My design > objective is to ensure they don't have that bug. They are more > important than me.
Hrm... better idiot-proofing just tends to produce better idiots.
> > The kernel is NOT some US home appliance festooned with 'do not eat this > > furniture' and 'do not expose your laserwrite to naked flame' messages. > > The readme says its been tested with egcs-1.1.2 and gcc 2.95.
Hrm. Ever wonder which country Alan lives in? :-)
(Alan: Visit the next McDonalds you pass, and buy a coffee. Look at the warning on the side about the coffee being hot... then complain it isn't, after a suitable delay...)
> > Large numbers of people routinely build the kernel with 'unsupported' compilers > > notably the pgcc project people and another group you will cause problems for > > - the GCC maintainers. They use the kernel tree as part of the test set for > > their kernel, something putting #ifdefs all over it will mean they have to > > mess around to fix too.
If it's specific enough to that particular gcc, it won't trip the gcc people up - unless they're really using that specific version, in which case it SHOULD blow up anyway!
> A moment of precision here. We won't test to see if the right > compiler is used, we will just test for the wrong one.
Which is fine, IMO. "Warning: your compiler MIGHT be broken - please look at README" is OK, as is "Error: this compiler *IS* broken - it's gcc X.XX, which we know is broken because (foo)". "Error: this compiler looks like version foo, which we think might be broken" isn't, as Alan says...
James.
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