Subject: Re: RFC:  what's in a stable series?
From: Alan Cox <alan@lxorguk.ukuu.org.uk>
To: herbert@13thfloor.at
Cc: Jeff Garzik <jgarzik@pobox.com>, LKML <linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org>,
       Marcelo Tosatti <marcelo@conectiva.com.br>
In-Reply-To: <20030710033409.GA1498@www.13thfloor.at>
References: <3F0CBC08.1060201@pobox.com>
	 <20030710033409.GA1498@www.13thfloor.at>
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Date: 10 Jul 2003 12:22:35 +0100
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On Iau, 2003-07-10 at 04:34, Herbert Pötzl wrote:
> In my opinion (and you requested input *g*), the
> kernel userland API can be changed as much as is
> required to improve/stabilize/bugfix the kernel,
> unless this change breaks something in userland
> without an already available update/upgrade/etc ...

In a lot of cases (like O_DIRECT) its cleaner to simply break the API
in a way that will spew warnings if people miss changes than mess around
with extra methods that instead break drivers that forgot to use C99
initializers.

I plan to carry on breaking the kernel internal API when I have to
and its easy to fix up the few affected users. I broke all the audio
drivers between 2.4.21->22 but that was worth doing for example.


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