Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id ; Mon, 5 Nov 2001 17:00:58 -0500 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id ; Mon, 5 Nov 2001 17:00:48 -0500 Received: from cx97923-a.phnx3.az.home.com ([24.9.112.194]:54156 "EHLO grok.yi.org") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id ; Mon, 5 Nov 2001 17:00:36 -0500 Message-ID: <3BE70B9A.1010904@candelatech.com> Date: Mon, 05 Nov 2001 14:58:50 -0700 From: Ben Greear Organization: Candela Technologies User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:0.9.4) Gecko/20011019 Netscape6/6.2 X-Accept-Language: en-us MIME-Version: 1.0 To: Tim Jansen CC: Rik van Riel , dalecki@evision.ag, Stephen Satchell , "Albert D. Cahalan" , Jakob =?ISO-8859-1?Q?=D8stergaard?= , Alex Bligh - linux-kernel , Alexander Viro , John Levon , linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, Daniel Phillips Subject: Re: PROPOSAL: dot-proc interface [was: /proc stuff] In-Reply-To: <160qqc-1ClvWqC@fmrl04.sul.t-online.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Tim Jansen wrote: > On Monday 05 November 2001 19:40, Rik van Riel wrote: > >>I think you've hit the core of the problem. There is no magical >>bullet which will stop badly written userland programs from >>breaking, but the kernel developers should have the courtesy >>of providing documentation for the /proc files so the writers >>of userland programs can have an idea what to expect. >> > > I think the core insight is that if the kernel continues to have dozens of > "human-readable" file formats in /proc, each should to be documented using a > BNF description that can guarantee that the format is still valid in the > future, even if there is the need to add additional fields. > The result of this is, of course, that it may be very hard to write > shell scripts that won't break sooner or later and that accessing the data in > C is much more work than a simple scanf. So if BNF makes it harder for shell scripts and sscanf, and harder for the kernel developers...what good does it do??? I definately don't advocate anything more than some simple documentation about whatever format the proc module writer uses. All of these interfaces (proc, ioctl, ...) end up being hacks at some point, but a _documented_ hack can be called a feature :) > > bye... > - > 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/ > > -- Ben Greear President of Candela Technologies Inc http://www.candelatech.com ScryMUD: http://scry.wanfear.com http://scry.wanfear.com/~greear - 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/