Messages in this thread | | | Date | Mon, 10 Sep 2007 13:17:59 -0700 | From | Andrew Morton <> | Subject | Re: [-mm patch] unexport sys_{open,read} |
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On Mon, 10 Sep 2007 21:58:21 +0200 Adrian Bunk <bunk@kernel.org> wrote:
> On Mon, Sep 10, 2007 at 10:25:56AM -0700, Andrew Morton wrote: > >... > > Also, Adrian goes on and on with weird theories about how I'm picking on > > him. But other patches (such as 7d12e780e003f93433d49ce78c) DO OTHER > > STUFF. Like simplify the code, and make it smaller, faster or more > > maintainable or more reliable. > > The unexport of sys_{open,read} actually makes the kernel smaller... > > > So the tradeoff is quite different from a > > one-liner which does nothing but kill an export. And, contrary to his > > claims, we _do_ put temporary back-compat wrappers in there when we > > change interfaces on those relatively rare occasions when it is possible, > > and when we remember to do it. > > Your tradeoff misses the impact on external modules. > > The unexport of sys_open will not break many modules, while > commit 7d12e780e003f93433d49ce78c most likely broke the majority of > external modules. > > Do we guarantee some API stability to module authors or do we not > guarantee this?
Neither. We look at each change and make sensible decisions based upon a number of factors.
> Emphasizing on API stability in the cases that don't matter much while > breaking the API in cases that affect most modules doesn't make any > sense at all. > > And your "remember to do it" is an important point. As an example, every > change to a struct that is part of the signature of one or exportted > functions does change the API of all of these functions. If we offer any > API stability for external modules we need to review all patches that > touch include/ because many of them contain changes to the modules API > that might otherwise get missed. > > Let's either continue to state that their is no stable API for external > modules or define some API stability rules and do whatever is required > for implementing them.
There is no benefit in making some rigid set of rules. - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
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