Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1751112AbWJDUw0 (ORCPT ); Wed, 4 Oct 2006 16:52:26 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S1751113AbWJDUw0 (ORCPT ); Wed, 4 Oct 2006 16:52:26 -0400 Received: from gundega.hpl.hp.com ([192.6.19.190]:41178 "EHLO gundega.hpl.hp.com") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1751112AbWJDUwZ (ORCPT ); Wed, 4 Oct 2006 16:52:25 -0400 Date: Wed, 4 Oct 2006 13:47:18 -0700 To: Linus Torvalds Cc: "John W. Linville" , Jeff Garzik , Lee Revell , Alessandro Suardi , Norbert Preining , Andrew Morton , linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, johannes@sipsolutions.net Subject: Re: wpa supplicant/ipw3945, ESSID last char missing Message-ID: <20061004204718.GA4599@bougret.hpl.hp.com> Reply-To: jt@hpl.hp.com References: <20061003183849.GA17635@bougret.hpl.hp.com> <4522B311.7070905@garzik.org> <20061003214038.GE23912@tuxdriver.com> <20061004181032.GA4272@bougret.hpl.hp.com> <20061004185903.GA4386@bougret.hpl.hp.com> <20061004195229.GA4459@bougret.hpl.hp.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: Organisation: HP Labs Palo Alto Address: HP Labs, 1U-17, 1501 Page Mill road, Palo Alto, CA 94304, USA. E-mail: jt@hpl.hp.com User-Agent: Mutt/1.5.9i From: Jean Tourrilhes X-HPL-MailScanner: Found to be clean X-HPL-MailScanner-From: jt@hpl.hp.com Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Content-Length: 1618 Lines: 44 On Wed, Oct 04, 2006 at 01:12:17PM -0700, Linus Torvalds wrote: > > > On Wed, 4 Oct 2006, Jean Tourrilhes wrote: > > > > Yes, this is precisely what we have been doing, the two APIs > > have been working at the same time for more than 6 months. > > In the kernel for any particular driver? > > Or just in user-land? > > There's a big difference. Both actually. I've slightly simplified the situation, because you may not care for all the details, but if you want to know the gory details... It's all started with some kernel drivers changing the way they handle ESSID. That was last January. So, in the kernel, you had half the drivers doing the old way (NUL terminated), and half doing the new way (not NUL terminated). I immediately asked to revert to the old way. All the Wireless people were against me, and this mish-mash of API was kept (it was public on netdev). At this point, nobody cared that userspace API was broken and I was left cleaning up the mess. Of course, some part of the Wireless Tools did broke on the new API (I had bug reports), so I had to push new version of Wireless Tools. And I took this opportunity to finish moving over the API to the new way. Sometime breaking userspace APIs is perfectly OK, while sometimes it's not. You just have to make sure that Linus does not hear about it, I guess ;-) > Linus Have fun... Jean - 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/