Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1759710AbXENUSw (ORCPT ); Mon, 14 May 2007 16:18:52 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S1754581AbXENUSo (ORCPT ); Mon, 14 May 2007 16:18:44 -0400 Received: from pentafluge.infradead.org ([213.146.154.40]:58237 "EHLO pentafluge.infradead.org" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1754200AbXENUSn (ORCPT ); Mon, 14 May 2007 16:18:43 -0400 Date: Mon, 14 May 2007 21:18:17 +0100 From: Christoph Hellwig To: Jeff Garzik Cc: Jean Delvare , Linus Torvalds , Antonino Ingargiola , Linux Kernel Mailing List Subject: Re: Linux 2.6.22-rc1 Message-ID: <20070514201817.GC20783@infradead.org> Mail-Followup-To: Christoph Hellwig , Jeff Garzik , Jean Delvare , Linus Torvalds , Antonino Ingargiola , Linux Kernel Mailing List References: <20070514081022.7fcee97f@hyperion.delvare> <5486cca80705140134r318296b8k37ad6f4562b4b535@mail.gmail.com> <20070514141437.631fcfd1@hyperion.delvare> <5486cca80705140628w5ff43ebdqf6a5413203226d5@mail.gmail.com> <20070514172138.1c870793@hyperion.delvare> <20070514202419.33a90f57@hyperion.delvare> <20070514212807.246c0281@hyperion.delvare> <4648BE31.3020800@garzik.org> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <4648BE31.3020800@garzik.org> User-Agent: Mutt/1.4.2.2i X-SRS-Rewrite: SMTP reverse-path rewritten from by pentafluge.infradead.org See http://www.infradead.org/rpr.html Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Content-Length: 2088 Lines: 42 On Mon, May 14, 2007 at 03:53:21PM -0400, Jeff Garzik wrote: > Jean Delvare wrote: > >On Mon, 14 May 2007 11:43:45 -0700 (PDT), Linus Torvalds wrote: > >>On Mon, 14 May 2007, Jean Delvare wrote: > >>>Sure, we don't allow that. Except for xfsprogs in 2.6.1, procps in > >>>2.6.4, oprofile in 2.6.13 and udev in 2.6.19, of course. > >>And we really complained about it! The oprofile thing should be fixed, > >>btw, and yeah,if udev breaks any more, I'll have to stop taking patches > >>from Greg. That thing has been a disaster, and everybody involved should > >>be ashamed and now hopefully *very* aware of the fact that we don't break > >>user-level interfaces. > >> > >>(Right now, I suspect we may have a loop setup regression. Not sure) > > > >While I'm all for keeping things relatively stable and not asking the > >user to constantly upgrade user-space, I believe that we just can't > >promise to never break user-level interfaces while keeping the > >development pace we have right now. We can promise to grant people > >significant delay before we drop compatibility options, but "forever" > >doesn't scale. > > > >If you really want to enforce the "never" rule, be prepared to either > >see development slow down and finally come to a stop, or see the code > >become unmaintainable and insecure and nobody is longer willing to work > >on it. > > Why do you think we -stopped- enforcing such a rule? :) > > It's been the rule throughout Linux's history. syscalls from early > Linux binaries should still work, for example. Except for very rare case (modules support comes to mine) syscall compatiblity works perfectly. But that's because syscalls are a very visible ABI and people don't break them by accident. They also don't decide they have a cool new scheme all syscalls need to follow now. Now compare that to sysfs.. - 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/