Linus,
> On Fri, 17 Mar 2006, Michael Kerrisk wrote:
> > >
> > > My personal opinion is that having a different set of flags is more
> > > confusing
> >
> > How is it confusing? And who is it confusing for?
>
> It's confusing because
> - it's just more flags to keep track of
Agreed, there is a "confusion cost" to that.
> - it's all the same issues that clone() has
At the moment, but possibly not in the future (if one day
usnhare() needs a flag that has no analogue in clone()).
> - it's an opportunity for future incoherence
Not sure what future incoherence you mean here. Anyway,
we inject some incoherence *now* (some unshare() flags reverse
their clone() counterparts, one does not).
> > It will potentially require kernel developers to think for just
> > a moment about what is going on. But why care about them --
> > they don't have to *use* this interface; userland programmers do.
>
> All the confusion is equally a userland issue, don't try to just enforce
> your own opinions as somehow being "facts" by repeating them over
> and over again.
I'm not trying to do that. I've repeated my statements
because I haven't seen any clear counterarguments. I have a
particular opinion about what constitutes confusion, and it
comes from a perspective that focuses on the kernel-userland
interface. I agree that it does create some "confusion cost"
for userland programmers to add new flags. But _in my opinion_
that cost is outweighed by the greater "confusion costs" that
I have described. Eric seemed to agree. Unfortunately for my
argument, you and Janak don't ;-).
Cheers,
Michael
--
Michael Kerrisk
maintainer of Linux man pages Sections 2, 3, 4, 5, and 7
Want to help with man page maintenance?
Grab the latest tarball at
ftp://ftp.win.tue.nl/pub/linux-local/manpages/,
read the HOWTOHELP file and grep the source
files for 'FIXME'.
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