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Date: Sun, 1 Dec 2002 10:54:38 -0800 (PST)
From: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@transmeta.com>
To: "David S. Miller" <davem@redhat.com>
cc: sfr@canb.auug.org.au, <linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org>, <anton@samba.org>,
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Subject: Re: [PATCH] Start of compat32.h (again)
In-Reply-To: <20021127.212638.35873260.davem@redhat.com>
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On Wed, 27 Nov 2002, David S. Miller wrote:
> 
> I envisioned moving the compat stuff right next to the "normal"
> implementation.

Why?

> A problem currently, is that when people change VFS stuff up one has
> to pay attention to update all the compat syscall layers as well.

Doesn't matter. The thing is, you have two kinds of fixups for things like 
VFS changes:

 - compiler warning/error based fixups (in which case it doesn't _matter_ 
   where it is, since in neither case will it get compiled for x86

 - a simple "grep xxxx *.c" kind of approach.

Yes, the latter often misses out on architecture files, because people
just won't even look at hits in sparc/ppc64/xxx, either being too timid to
want to check, or just not caring. But if the file is in kernel/xxxx, it 
will be noticed - at least as well as it would be if it was uglifying 
regular files with #ifdef's.

> Now if we put the stuff next to the non-compat stuff, it likely won't
> get missed.

.. but it will have ugly #ifdef's inside the source file, something that I 
absolutely detest. 

Face it, the "compat" stuff is _secondary_. If it breaks, it breaks. It's
better to have the main code paths clean and unsullied, and take the risk
of occasionally breaking the compatibility stuff (that will break
occasionally anyway, see above).

Quite frankly, I want people to literally have the option to just ignore
the compat stuff, simply because it's not as important as the core kernel 
code. 

I see the compat32 patches as a convenience, and as a way to avoid 
duplicating bus over the system. I do NOT consider it to be core 
functionality, and I do _not_ think it should be a first-class citizen. 
Sorry, guys. Code cleanliness is _way_ more important to me.

		Linus

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