Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1760034AbZANAdi (ORCPT ); Tue, 13 Jan 2009 19:33:38 -0500 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S1760309AbZANAdX (ORCPT ); Tue, 13 Jan 2009 19:33:23 -0500 Received: from smtp1.linux-foundation.org ([140.211.169.13]:39405 "EHLO smtp1.linux-foundation.org" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1758388AbZANAdV (ORCPT ); Tue, 13 Jan 2009 19:33:21 -0500 Date: Tue, 13 Jan 2009 16:33:01 -0800 (PST) From: Linus Torvalds X-X-Sender: torvalds@localhost.localdomain To: Roland McGrath cc: Andrew Morton , mtk.manpages@gmail.com, kernel list , Ulrich Drepper , Vegard Nossum , "linux-man@vger.kernel.org" Subject: Re: [PATCH] sys_waitid: return -EFAULT for NULL In-Reply-To: <20090113224941.36F19FC3DD@magilla.sf.frob.com> Message-ID: References: <20090113224759.7DFB7FC3DD@magilla.sf.frob.com> <20090113224941.36F19FC3DD@magilla.sf.frob.com> User-Agent: Alpine 2.00 (LFD 1167 2008-08-23) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org List-ID: X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Content-Length: 1309 Lines: 33 On Tue, 13 Jan 2009, Roland McGrath wrote: > > It's always been invalid to call waitid() with a NULL pointer. It was an > oversight that it was allowed (and acts like a wait4() call instead). I'm not going to take this. If it was some new system call, of if there was some downside to out behavior, I might be interested. As it is, our behaviour has zero downside, and changing existing interfaces simply isn't worth it. The alleged "downsides" are bogus: - POSIX is not that strict. EFAULT is one of the odd error cases anyway, and even explicit requirements are irrelevant: if somebody wants to get strict conformance paperwork done, you just need to tell where you differ, and you're basically done. But perhaps more important, nobody cares. - The "portability" argument is totally bogus, since it's not like you compile programs without even testing to another UNIX _anyway_. So I'm simply not going to potentially break binaries over something that is so _totally_ irrelevant. Document it in the man-page instead. Linus -- 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/