Nathan Hand wrote:
> On Mon, May 22, 2000 at 05:37:03AM +0000, jmcmullan@linuxcare.com wrote:
> > Personally, I don't care WHERE we put it - so long as it's
> > ALL IN ONE PLACE. James is right - having to look 10 different places
> > just to find out that ``oh yeah - I use setterm(1) to send the
> > ioctl() to my VT to turn on power management when I'm in the console''
> > just doesn't make sense - especially since we, the Linux community,
> > have the ability with Linux 3.0 to _drop_ all of the cruft that
> > has gathered in UNIX - and Linux - over the past 25 years.
>
> Large companies with massive amounts of money have already tried
> this. Tried and failed? No, tried and died.
>
> The cruft works. The best you can hope for is cleaner cruft. The
> cruft removal jihads almost always end in tears.
Cruft removal can also be made to work. A good "upgrade path" needs to
be available though. And there needs to be a transition period where
both interfaces are supported.
However, "traditional Unix cruft" is stuff that takes 5 to 10 years to
"remove". If it's "Linux Cruft", it can be removed in 1-2 years. But
in both cases, there needs to be a compile time option to be able to
compile/run old cruft-using programs.
The transition period is divided into two. In the first "half", the
new interface is available, and programs should be "ported" to use the
new stuff. The second half the old stuff prints annoying messages to
make people notice the programs that still use the old stuff.
The "third" half (which may last till eternity) is when just an
"option" exist which allows you to configure/use the old interface.
With dynamic libraries and LD_PRELOAD this can usually be implemented
in userspace, removing the cruft from the kernel .
Roger.
-- ** R.E.Wolff@BitWizard.nl ** http://www.BitWizard.nl/ ** +31-15-2137555 ** *-- BitWizard writes Linux device drivers for any device you may have! --* * Common sense is the collection of * ****** prejudices acquired by age eighteen. -- Albert Einstein ********- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.rutgers.edu Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Tue May 23 2000 - 21:00:21 EST