Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S261379AbUK0XR5 (ORCPT ); Sat, 27 Nov 2004 18:17:57 -0500 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S261376AbUK0XR4 (ORCPT ); Sat, 27 Nov 2004 18:17:56 -0500 Received: from canuck.infradead.org ([205.233.218.70]:50951 "EHLO canuck.infradead.org") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S261381AbUK0XRU (ORCPT ); Sat, 27 Nov 2004 18:17:20 -0500 Subject: Re: [RFC] Splitting kernel headers and deprecating __KERNEL__ From: David Woodhouse To: Arnd Bergmann Cc: "Randy.Dunlap" , Matthew Wilcox , Tonnerre , dhowells , torvalds@osdl.org, hch@infradead.org, aoliva@redhat.com, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, libc-hacker@sources.redhat.com In-Reply-To: <200411272353.54056.arnd@arndb.de> References: <19865.1101395592@redhat.com> <41A8AF8F.8060005@osdl.org> <1101575782.21273.5347.camel@baythorne.infradead.org> <200411272353.54056.arnd@arndb.de> Content-Type: text/plain Date: Sat, 27 Nov 2004 23:12:58 +0000 Message-Id: <1101597178.5278.6.camel@localhost.localdomain> Mime-Version: 1.0 X-Mailer: Evolution 2.0.2 (2.0.2-3.dwmw2.1) Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Spam-Score: 0.0 (/) X-SRS-Rewrite: SMTP reverse-path rewritten from by canuck.infradead.org See http://www.infradead.org/rpr.html Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Content-Length: 1231 Lines: 28 On Sat, 2004-11-27 at 23:53 +0100, Arnd Bergmann wrote: > The problem with these (atomic.h, bitops.h, byteorder.h, div64.h, > list.h, spinlock.h, unaligned.h and xor.h) is that they provide > functionality that is needed by many user application but not > provided by the compiler or libc. > > While I agree that it is an absolutely evil concept to include > them from the kernel headers, we have to face that by not installing > them, lots of this existing evil user code will be broken even > more and someone has to pick up the pieces. The existing evil user code is broken already. Any of the above can be implemented in a such a way that it only works in the kernel anyway. We don't need to preserve it any more than we need to preserve evil broken code which defines __KERNEL__ before including certain headers. We're supposed to be cleaning this crap up. If we want every evil broken hack that's currently possible to _remain_ possible, it's never going to work. -- dwmw2 - 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/