Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S262488AbUCCPXS (ORCPT ); Wed, 3 Mar 2004 10:23:18 -0500 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S262492AbUCCPXN (ORCPT ); Wed, 3 Mar 2004 10:23:13 -0500 Received: from pfepc.post.tele.dk ([195.41.46.237]:19857 "EHLO pfepc.post.tele.dk") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S262479AbUCCPUt (ORCPT ); Wed, 3 Mar 2004 10:20:49 -0500 Date: Wed, 3 Mar 2004 16:22:13 +0100 From: Sam Ravnborg To: Krzysztof Halasa , linuxabi@zytor.com Cc: Chris Friesen , =?iso-8859-1?Q?M=E5ns_Rullg=E5rd?= , linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Subject: Re: [ANNOUNCE] linux-libc-headers 2.6.3.0 Message-ID: <20040303152213.GA2148@mars.ravnborg.org> Mail-Followup-To: Krzysztof Halasa , linuxabi@zytor.com, Chris Friesen , =?iso-8859-1?Q?M=E5ns_Rullg=E5rd?= , linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org References: <200402291942.45392.mmazur@kernel.pl> <200402292130.55743.mmazur@kernel.pl> <200402292221.41977.mmazur@kernel.pl> <40434BD7.9060301@nortelnetworks.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: User-Agent: Mutt/1.4.1i Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Content-Length: 1681 Lines: 52 [Also sent to linuxabi@zytor.com] On Mon, Mar 01, 2004 at 07:10:31PM +0100, Krzysztof Halasa wrote: > > The "non-problem" here is, IMHO, that the cleaning of kernel headers > is quite trivial, and thus nobody is interested :-) The problem is that there is no infrastructure for abi only .h files (mainly). Matthew Wilcox + others IIRC has already posted a few patches, but I do not see this happening until 2.7 opens up. When the proper infrastructure is agreed upon on lot's of people will put some effort in this janitorial type of work. But imagine all the small mistakes, something we do not want in 2.6. IIRC the current agreed scheme is something along the lines of this: abi/abi-linux/* Userspace relevant parts of include/linux abi/abi-asm/ symlink to abi/abi-$(ARCH) abi/abi-i386 i386 specific userland abi abi/abi-ppc ppc .... So a header file in include/linux with a counterpart in abi could look like this: include/linux/wait.h: #include #include typedef struct __wait_queue wait_queue_t; ... abi/abi-linux/wait.h: #define WNOHANG 0x00000001 #define WUNTRACED 0x00000002 This proposal meets some resistence related to internal issues such as renaming of internal types etc. But in the end the gain from a scheme like this outweights the drawbacks - IMHO. And the backward compatible stuff can be located in abi where it may belong - if really needed. Sam - 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/