Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S268918AbTGJAMR (ORCPT ); Wed, 9 Jul 2003 20:12:17 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S268723AbTGJAIC (ORCPT ); Wed, 9 Jul 2003 20:08:02 -0400 Received: from parcelfarce.linux.theplanet.co.uk ([195.92.249.252]:25993 "EHLO www.linux.org.uk") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S266225AbTGJAHA (ORCPT ); Wed, 9 Jul 2003 20:07:00 -0400 Message-ID: <3F0CB185.3000308@pobox.com> Date: Wed, 09 Jul 2003 20:21:25 -0400 From: Jeff Garzik Organization: none User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.2.1) Gecko/20021213 Debian/1.2.1-2.bunk X-Accept-Language: en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: Alan Cox CC: Marcelo Tosatti , Marc-Christian Petersen , Andreas Dilger , Andrea Arcangeli , Christoph Hellwig , marcelo@connectiva.com.br, Trond Myklebust , lkml Subject: Re: ->direct_IO API change in current 2.4 BK References: <20030709133109.A23587@infradead.org> <200307091954.12895.m.c.p@wolk-project.de> <200307092022.35295.m.c.p@wolk-project.de> <1057794223.7137.15.camel@dhcp22.swansea.linux.org.uk> In-Reply-To: <1057794223.7137.15.camel@dhcp22.swansea.linux.org.uk> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Content-Length: 1860 Lines: 46 Alan Cox wrote: > On Mer, 2003-07-09 at 20:13, Marcelo Tosatti wrote: > >>I applied it because, in my ignorance, I did not noticed it would break >>the stable API. >> >>I applied it because I wanted comments useful from people (Like hch and >>others did). > > > I'm not sure I see what the fuss is about a slight API change that is > safe since it spews warnings/breaks existing code that isnt fixed. At > least one vendor kernel also has the changed API anyway "safe" ignores the pain of people trying to support multiple kernels. Each API change like the direct_IO one introduces ifdefs. Changing a function prototype is particularly annoying because you can't create a backwards-compat wrapper I disagree with the AC97 codec changes being merged into 2.4, too, for the same reason. Yes I recognize it is required to support new hardware. Yes I realize it vastly simplifies supporting some existing hardware. But I don't think you realize (or don't care?) about the maintenance pain created by the change. If a vendor wishes their driver to support 2.4.21 _and_ 2.4.22 (not a lot to ask), they must add a bunch of ifdef crud in their OSS driver. Feature and API additions are _far_ less painful than API changes in the middle of a stable series. Overall, I think we are looking at a question which needs to be answered by the community: what constitutes a stable series? when do we stop changing the API and let it stabilize? ... and I am writing a mail right now to ask that question (as requested by Marcelo and a couple others, though I wanted to do it for a while now). Jeff - 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/