Messages in this thread | | | Subject | Re: [RFC] Splitting kernel headers and deprecating __KERNEL__ | From | David Woodhouse <> | Date | Tue, 30 Nov 2004 23:50:56 +0000 |
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On Tue, 2004-11-30 at 14:51 -0800, Linus Torvalds wrote: > The way to prevent _future_ abuse is by adding something like > > #ifndef __KERNEL__ > #warning "This really doesn't work" > #endif > > which does that, and has the advantage of not breaking anything at all. > > In other words: if you want to move things around just to break things, > THEN THAT IS INCREDIBLY STUPID. We don't do things to screw our users > over.
Linus, you're arguing that it's better to let users use something which is non-portable and silently does the wrong thing, as long as it actually compiles. That this is preferable to making sure it doesn't compile.
Now, there are cases (like _perhaps_ byteorder.h) where we should probably allow this kind of 'abuse' to continue because it's fairly harmless and it does actually _work_.
But atomic.h isn't an example of that.
If I wrote a userspace program which relies upon the md5sum of certain kernel headers not changing, would you decree that the headers in question should not change at _all_ because that would 'break existing software'? Of course not; you have to draw the line somewhere. And I would draw it somewhere between atomic.h and byteorder.h -- where would _you_ draw it?
-- dwmw2
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