Messages in this thread | | | From | Mariusz Mazur <> | Subject | Re: [RFC] Splitting kernel headers and deprecating __KERNEL__ | Date | Mon, 29 Nov 2004 12:41:06 +0100 |
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On poniedziałek 29 listopad 2004 02:28, Linus Torvalds wrote: > So I would encourage people to think about ways to clean up some of the > worst warts, but take into account: > - testing it out with whatever random collection of old distributions and > special applications is almost impossible. So every single step of the > way should be (a) small and (b) obviously not break any current users.
If I understand correctly the above means "include/* userland breakage problems open for fixing" and the "kernel includes aren't for userland" part is obsolete?
> - cleanup just for the sake of cleanup always needs to take pain into > account. If you cannot make each small step "worth it", then just don't > do it. If the "cleanup" just adds another file and doesn't actually > _help_ anything that you can point to, it's not a cleanup, it's just an > exercise in wanking. > > IOW, I seriously doubt any "let's reorganize header files just to make it > look good" _ever_ accomplished anything. But if there are _specific_ > header files that have _specific_ problems, let's look at maybe solving > those. And if you cannot point to a specific problem with a suggested > specific solution, please don't cc me.
Potential breakage is mostly a non issue - since vanilla kernel headers are mostly useless for userland anyway, one must either patch them or use my headers (fedora's?). As for my headers - I can always provide a compatibility layer that will look like the old tree but in fact use the new tree.* And that also means application specific hacks not to break some app (I'm doing that now anyway, so no difference).
I'm *really* for fixing the header problem once and for all one way (lifting the 'kernel includes aren't for userland' ban) or the other (making a separate, userland available part that glibc and other apps can use cleanly). Maintaining a separate tree of those headers ain't much fun and it would be nice if I could quit doing that some time in the future.
* Fluent and (mostly) painless migration guaranteed or your money back.
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