Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1751362AbWBVRMY (ORCPT ); Wed, 22 Feb 2006 12:12:24 -0500 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S1751375AbWBVRMX (ORCPT ); Wed, 22 Feb 2006 12:12:23 -0500 Received: from smtp.osdl.org ([65.172.181.4]:24016 "EHLO smtp.osdl.org") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1751362AbWBVRMW (ORCPT ); Wed, 22 Feb 2006 12:12:22 -0500 Date: Wed, 22 Feb 2006 09:08:47 -0800 (PST) From: Linus Torvalds To: David Zeuthen cc: Kay Sievers , Pekka J Enberg , Greg KH , Adrian Bunk , Robert Love , Andrew Morton , Linux Kernel Mailing List , John Stultz Subject: Re: 2.6.16-rc4: known regressions In-Reply-To: <1140625103.21517.18.camel@daxter.boston.redhat.com> Message-ID: References: <20060217231444.GM4422@stusta.de> <84144f020602190306o3149d51by82b8ccc6108af012@mail.gmail.com> <20060219145442.GA4971@stusta.de> <1140383653.11403.8.camel@localhost> <20060220010205.GB22738@suse.de> <1140562261.11278.6.camel@localhost> <20060221225718.GA12480@vrfy.org> <20060222152743.GA22281@vrfy.org> <1140625103.21517.18.camel@daxter.boston.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: 5503 Lines: 127 On Wed, 22 Feb 2006, David Zeuthen wrote: > > Oh, you know, I don't think that's exactly how it works; HAL is pretty > much at the mercy of what changes goes into the kernel. And, trust me, > the changes we need to cope with from your so-called stable API are not > so nice. Why do you "cope"? Start complaining. If kernel changes screw up something, COMPLAIN. Loudly. They shouldn't. > It also makes me release note that newer HAL releases require newer > kernel and udev releases and that's alright. It's _somewhat_ ok to have a well-defined one-way dependency. It's sad, but inevitable sometimes. For example, the kernel does have a dependency on the compiler used to compile it. We try to avoid it as far as possible, but we've slowly been updating it, first from 1.40 to 2.75 to 2.9x and now to 3.1. But the kernel obviously shouldn't have any other run-time dependencies, because everything else is "on top of" the kernel. What is NOT ok is to have a two-way dependency. If user-space HAL code depends on a new kernel, that's ok, although I suspect users would hope that it wouldn't be "kernel of the week", but more a "kernel of the last few months" thing. But if you have a TWO-WAY dependency, you're screwed. That means that you have to upgrade in lock-step, and that just IS NOT ACCEPTABLE. It's horrible for the user, but even more importantly, it's horrible for developers, because it means that you can't say "a bug happened" and do things like try to narrow it down with bisection or similar. > For just one example of API breaking see > > https://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=175998 So the kernel obviously shouldn't be just randomly changing the type numbers around. The _real_ bug seems to be that some people think it is OK to do this kind of user-visible changes, without even considering the downstream, or indeed, without even telling anybody else (like Andrew or me) about it. > This breaks stuff for end users in a stable distribution. Not good. Indeed. Not good at all. And yes, some of it may be just HAL being a fragile mess, and some of it may end up being just user-level code that must be made to be more robust ("I see a new type I don't understand" "Ok, assume a lowest common denominator, and stop whining about it"). But a lot of it is definitely some kernel people being _waayy_ too cavalier about userspace-visible changes. > I think maintaining a stable syscall interface makes sense. Didn't you > once say that only the syscall interface was supposed to be stable? Or > was that Greg KH? I can't remember... It's _not_ just system calls. It's any user-visible stuff. That very much includes /proc, /sys, and any "kernel pipes" aka netlink etc bytestreams. What is not stable is the _internal_ data structures. We break external modules, and we sometimes break even in-kernel drivers etc with abandon, if that is what it takes to fix something or make it prettier. So fcntl and ioctl numbers etc are _inviolate_, because they are part of the system interface. As is /proc and /sys. We don't change them just because it's "convenient" to change them in the kernel. If /sys needs an extended type to describe the command set of a device, we do NOT just change an existing attribute in /sys. > And I also think that breaking things like sysfs can be alright as long > as you coordinate it with major users of it, e.g. udev and HAL. The major users are USERS. Not developers. It doesn't help to "coordinate" things, when what gets screwed is the end-user who no longer can upgrade his kernel without worrying that something might break. THIS IS WHY WE MUST MAKE THE KERNEL INTERFACES STABLE! If users cannot upgrade their kernels safely, we will have two totally unacceptable end results: - users won't upgrade. They don't dare to, because it's too painful, and they don't understand HAL or hotplug, or whatever. If a developer cannot see that this is unacceptable, then that developer is a nincompoop and needs to be educated. - users upgrade, and generate bug reports and waste other developers time because those other developers didn't realize that the HAL cabal had decided that that breakage was "ok". Or worse, they don't generate the bug reports, and then six months from now, when they test again, and it's still broken, they generate a really bad one ("it doesn't work") when everybody - including the HAL cabal - has forgotten what it was all about. Again, if a developer cannot see that this is unacceptable, then that developer is not playing along, and needs to have his mental compass re-oriented. The fact is, regressions are about 10x more costly than fixing old bugs. They cause problems downstream that just waste everybodys time. It's a _hell_ of a lot more efficient to spend extra time to keep old interfaces stable than it is to cause regressions. > One day perhaps sysfs will be "just right" and you can mark it as being > stable. I just don't think we're there yet. And I see no reason > whatsoever to paint things as black and white as you do. Nothing will _ever_ be "just right", and this has been going on too long. We had better get our act together. 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/