On Mon, Sep 10, 2007 at 01:17:59PM -0700, Andrew Morton wrote:
> On Mon, 10 Sep 2007 21:58:21 +0200 Adrian Bunk <[email protected]> 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.
In my experience, the only factor is whether a patch has to go through
you or not...
> > 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.
Is is considered beneficial to provide API stability for external
modules or not?
cu
Adrian
--
"Is there not promise of rain?" Ling Tan asked suddenly out
of the darkness. There had been need of rain for many days.
"Only a promise," Lao Er said.
Pearl S. Buck - Dragon Seed
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