Date: Wed, 12 Jan 2005 15:10:49 -0800
From: Andrew Morton <akpm@osdl.org>
To: Greg KH <greg@kroah.com>
Cc: ak@suse.de, mst@mellanox.co.il, tiwai@suse.de, mingo@elte.hu,
       rlrevell@joe-job.com, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, pavel@suse.cz,
       discuss@x86-64.org, gordon.jin@intel.com,
       alsa-devel@lists.sourceforge.net, VANDROVE@vc.cvut.cz
Subject: Re: [PATCH] fix: macros to detect existance of unlocked_ioctl and
 compat_ioctl
Message-Id: <20050112151049.7473db7d.akpm@osdl.org>
In-Reply-To: <20050112225230.GA14590@kroah.com>
References: <20041215065650.GM27225@wotan.suse.de>
	<20041217014345.GA11926@mellanox.co.il>
	<20050103011113.6f6c8f44.akpm@osdl.org>
	<20050105144043.GB19434@mellanox.co.il>
	<s5hd5wjybt8.wl@alsa2.suse.de>
	<20050105133448.59345b04.akpm@osdl.org>
	<20050106140636.GE25629@mellanox.co.il>
	<20050112203606.GA23307@mellanox.co.il>
	<20050112212954.GA13558@kroah.com>
	<20050112214326.GB14703@wotan.suse.de>
	<20050112225230.GA14590@kroah.com>
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Greg KH <greg@kroah.com> wrote:
>
> On Wed, Jan 12, 2005 at 10:43:26PM +0100, Andi Kleen wrote:
> > > No, we do not do that in the kernel today, and I'm pretty sure we don't
> > 
> > Actually we do. e.g. take a look at skbuff.h HAVE_*
> > There are other examples too.
> > 
> > > want to start doing it (it would get _huge_ very quickly...)
> > 
> > I disagree since the alternative is so ugly.
> 
> But the main problem with this is, when do we start deleting the HAVE_
> symbols?

This is a self-correcting system.  If the symbols are so offensive, someone
will get offended and will submit a patch to delete them at the appropriate
time.  If they're not so offensive then we've nothing to care about.

> ...
> And as for that "policy", it's been stated in public by Andrew and
> Linus and me (if I count for anything, doubtful...) a number of
> documented times.

not me ;) It's two lines of code and makes things much simpler for the
users of our work.  Seems a no-brainer.

And practically speaking, we don't make such fundamental driver-visible
changes _that_ often - if we end up getting buried under a proliferation of
HAVE_FOO macros, then the presence of the macros is the least of our
problems, yes?
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