Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1750966AbVL2UuA (ORCPT ); Thu, 29 Dec 2005 15:50:00 -0500 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S1750967AbVL2UuA (ORCPT ); Thu, 29 Dec 2005 15:50:00 -0500 Received: from smtp.osdl.org ([65.172.181.4]:39616 "EHLO smtp.osdl.org") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1750965AbVL2UuA (ORCPT ); Thu, 29 Dec 2005 15:50:00 -0500 Date: Thu, 29 Dec 2005 12:49:16 -0800 (PST) From: Linus Torvalds To: Dave Jones cc: Ingo Molnar , Andrew Morton , arjan@infradead.org, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, mpm@selenic.com Subject: Re: [patch 00/2] improve .text size on gcc 4.0 and newer compilers In-Reply-To: <20051229202852.GE12056@redhat.com> Message-ID: References: <20051228114637.GA3003@elte.hu> <1135798495.2935.29.camel@laptopd505.fenrus.org> <20051228212313.GA4388@elte.hu> <20051228214845.GA7859@elte.hu> <20051228201150.b6cfca14.akpm@osdl.org> <20051229073259.GA20177@elte.hu> <20051229202852.GE12056@redhat.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Content-Length: 1744 Lines: 38 On Thu, 29 Dec 2005, Dave Jones wrote: > > Seriously, we break things _every_ release. Sometimes in tiny > 'doesn't really matter' ways, sometimes in "fuck, my system no > longer works" ways, but the days where we I didn't have to tell > our userspace packagers to rev a half dozen or so packages up to the > latest upstream revisions when I've pushed a rebased kernel are > a distant memory. Umm.. Complain more. I upgrade kernels a lot more often than I upgrade distros, and things don't break. They're not allowed to break, because I refuse to upgrade my user programs just because I do kernel development. But I'd only notice a small part of user space, so if people don't complain, they break not because we don't care, but because we didn't even know. So if you have a user program that breaks, _complain_. It's really not supposed to happen outside of perhaps kernel module loaders etc things that get really really chummy with kernel internals (and even that was fixed: the modern way of loading modules isn't that chummy any more, so hopefully we'll not need to break even module loaders again). If we change some /proc file thing, breakage is often totally unintentional, and complaining is the right thing - people might not even have realized it broke. At least _I_ take breakage reports seriously. If there are maintainers that don't, complain to them. I'll back you up. Breaking user space simply isn't acceptable without years of preparation and warning. Linus - 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/