Messages in this thread | | | Date | Tue, 27 Jan 2009 16:19:13 -0800 (PST) | From | Linus Torvalds <> | Subject | Re: [: [git pull] headers_check fixes] |
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On Tue, 27 Jan 2009, H. Peter Anvin wrote:
> Linus Torvalds wrote: > > > > Do you think the "fix headers_check" patches spend lots of time analyzing > > things? I bet no. They just try to make the warning go away, so you don't > > actually end up with any more "coverage" anyway. Quite the reverse - instead > > of having a simple rule ("CONFIG_xyz options simply do not exist in user > > space"), you end up having ad-hoc hacks on a per-fix basis. > > > > This is probably true. I think we should add this as one more of the > preprocessing rules which we really should just do, as well as automatic > mangling of integer types.
Btw, the really scary thing is that I bet there are programs out there that "know" about kernel internals, and do things like
#define CONFIG_SMP 1 #define __KERNEL__ 1 #include <asm/atomic.h>
in order to get the atomic helpers from the kernel, and using CONFIG_xyz markers to force the exact version they want.
And we will inevitably always end up breaking stuff like that. Nothing we can do about it - in the end, users can do infinitely odd things and know about our internals, and whatever changes we do will occasionally break some of the more incestuous code.
Linus
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