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Message-ID: <787b0d920610181123q1848693ajccf7a91567e54227@mail.gmail.com>
Date: Wed, 18 Oct 2006 14:23:37 -0400
From: "Albert Cahalan" <acahalan@gmail.com>
To: linux-kernel <linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org>,
       "Andrew Morton" <akpm@osdl.org>, "Linus Torvalds" <torvalds@osdl.org>,
       ebiederm@xmission.com
Subject: sysctl
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In the wireless-extensions thread, Linus writes:

> In general, the answer to "when can we break user space" is very simple.
>
> Never.
>
> It's just not acceptable. We maintain old interfaces for years (and in
> some cases, well over a decade by now), simply because the pain from not
> doing so is horrendous, and it makes debugging impossible. You get into
> situations where users need to upgrade to tools that don't work with older
> kernels, and can thus not downgrade, etc etc.

I guess the sysctl question has been answered then,
especially since random normal apps use sysctl.

If it needs a maintainer, put me down.

I think the main problem was fixed long ago,
by assigning fixed numbers to the enum values.
Practically no other kernel code uses an enum
for an ABI, and I think we can see why.
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