Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S933278AbXIJMFw (ORCPT ); Mon, 10 Sep 2007 08:05:52 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S1758388AbXIJMDr (ORCPT ); Mon, 10 Sep 2007 08:03:47 -0400 Received: from emailhub.stusta.mhn.de ([141.84.69.5]:47238 "EHLO mailhub.stusta.mhn.de" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-FAIL) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1758362AbXIJMDq (ORCPT ); Mon, 10 Sep 2007 08:03:46 -0400 Date: Mon, 10 Sep 2007 14:03:53 +0200 From: Adrian Bunk To: Andrew Morton Cc: Christoph Hellwig , perex@suse.cz, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Subject: Re: [-mm patch] unexport sys_{open,read} Message-ID: <20070910120353.GD3563@stusta.de> References: <20070909202527.GT3563@stusta.de> <20070909203920.GA11764@infradead.org> <20070909145940.0b41c8a5.akpm@linux-foundation.org> <20070910090808.GA31204@infradead.org> <20070910022324.c69e1897.akpm@linux-foundation.org> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8 Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <20070910022324.c69e1897.akpm@linux-foundation.org> User-Agent: Mutt/1.5.16 (2007-06-11) Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Content-Length: 1932 Lines: 46 On Mon, Sep 10, 2007 at 02:23:24AM -0700, Andrew Morton wrote: > On Mon, 10 Sep 2007 10:08:08 +0100 Christoph Hellwig wrote: >... > > > Adrian knows this, yet he habitually sends zero-warning export-removal > > > patches and I habitually ignore them. I guess we must both enjoy this or > > > something. > > > > And I think almost everyone disagrees with you. We just carry too much > > crap around because of your subborness in this issue, and it gets really > > annoying to have some high up on the food chain fighting his longly flight > > against the other people. > > I would like to see "everyone" explain what we lose by giving developers a > bit of warning before we break their stuff. >... If it is really your intention that "everyone" warns external module authors in advance, the interesting part of the process are patches like commit 7d12e780e003f93433d49ce78cfedf4b4c52adc5 that break the API for virtually every module. EXPORT_UNUSED_SYMBOL can't handle such API changes, you'll need to add other parts to the process. In this case it would most likely require adding a new IRQ API plus new APIs in several subsystems where structs changed, mantaining both in parallel for some time, and then dropping the older ones after some time. What we lose is a bit of flexibility when changing kernel code plus a bit of time when adding replacement APIs and maintaining both in parallel. cu Adrian -- "Is there not promise of rain?" Ling Tan asked suddenly out of the darkness. There had been need of rain for many days. "Only a promise," Lao Er said. Pearl S. Buck - Dragon Seed - 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/