Re: Why no XML in the Kernel?

From: Bill Davidsen
Date: Mon Oct 03 2005 - 14:21:41 EST


James Courtier-Dutton wrote:
Nick Piggin wrote:

Ahmad Reza Cheraghi wrote:

Can somebody tell me why the Kernel-Development dont
wanne have XML is being used in the Kernel??


Because nobody has come up with a good reason why it
should be. Same as anything that isn't in the kernel.

Nick

I have a requirement to pass information from the kernel to user space. The information is passed fairly rarely, but over time extra parameters are added. At the moment we just use a struct, but that means that the kernel and the userspace app have to both keep in step. If something like XML was used, we could implement new parameters in the kernel, and the user space could just ignore them, until the user space is upgraded.
XML would initially seem a good idea for this, but are there any methods currently used in the kernel that could handle these parameter changes over time.

For example, should the sysfs be used for this?

Any comments?

For decades people have been solving this with key:value, ignoring unknown keys. And using nice text format eliminates any endian and word size issues.

XML sounds like overkill for problems of this type.

--
-bill davidsen (davidsen@xxxxxxx)
"The secret to procrastination is to put things off until the
last possible moment - but no longer" -me
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