Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S964833Ab3E1RgK (ORCPT ); Tue, 28 May 2013 13:36:10 -0400 Received: from terminus.zytor.com ([198.137.202.10]:52707 "EHLO mail.zytor.com" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S964784Ab3E1RgJ (ORCPT ); Tue, 28 May 2013 13:36:09 -0400 Message-ID: <51A4EADB.9080703@zytor.com> Date: Tue, 28 May 2013 10:35:23 -0700 From: "H. Peter Anvin" User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:17.0) Gecko/20130311 Thunderbird/17.0.4 MIME-Version: 1.0 To: Rob Landley CC: Zhang Yanfei , "kexec@lists.infradead.org" , "linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org" , HATAYAMA Daisuke , Simon Horman , "Eric W. Biederman" , Andrew Morton , Vivek Goyal , Zhang Yanfei Subject: Re: [PATCH v2 2/7] Documentation/devices.txt: Mark /dev/oldmem obsolete References: <1369721851.2776.37@driftwood> <51A44DD5.5050301@cn.fujitsu.com> <1369761966.2776.39@driftwood> In-Reply-To: <1369761966.2776.39@driftwood> X-Enigmail-Version: 1.5.1 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org List-ID: X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Content-Length: 1244 Lines: 32 On 05/28/2013 10:26 AM, Rob Landley wrote: >> >> So, could I just use UNSED to replace OBSOLETE here? Or use >> "OBSOLETE/UNUSED"? > > Obsolete is fine. > > Obsolete means it was used at some point, and thus reusing it might > confuse or conflcit with legacy software. Unused could just mean that we > left a gap for some reason, it doesn't imply it ever was used. > > Explicitly documenting "unused" is kind of silly: all the ones we > _don't_ document are presumably unused. Obsolete carries with it a very > mild warning about legacy software, which is presumably why we still > bother to mention it at all instead of just removing the entry. > > (Then again the point was that nothing ever used this interface in the > first place. Personally I'd just have removed the entry...) > "Obsolete" in this specific context means that the reservation is obsolete, but was used in kernels past, therefore the name and number should not be reused to prevent old software from misbehaving. -hpa -- 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/