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Date: Fri, 2 Aug 2002 21:27:32 +0200 (CEST)
From: Roman Zippel <zippel@linux-m68k.org>
X-X-Sender: roman@serv
To: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@transmeta.com>
cc: David Woodhouse <dwmw2@infradead.org>, David Howells <dhowells@redhat.com>,
       <alan@redhat.com>, <linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org>
Subject: Re: manipulating sigmask from filesystems and drivers 
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Hi

On Fri, 2 Aug 2002, Linus Torvalds wrote:

> Binary compatibility is important. As is the larger issue of generic UNIX
> compatibility. You had better have some really strong arguments for why
> you would think I'd be willing to break compatibility. So far you have had
> _no_ arguments for the question "Why?".

I never asked for breaking binary compatibility.
On the other hand I can give you an example, why I'd like to have a
choice. I expect from a good application that it recovers gracefully from
failures, so if I'm saving a file and the server goes down, I would
really, really like it if something happened when I push that stop button
or I press Esc and the application should offer me the possibility to save
the file somewhere else.

To implement this I would suggest using file flags instead of new task
flags:

	O_ATOMIC
	O_NONBLOCK
	O_SIGNALINT
	O_KILLINT
	O_DONT_BOTHER_ME

The first one might be useful for aio, it wants something like that
already anyway.
This way applications had a choice, how read/write should behave on
signals.

bye, Roman


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