Re: [RFC][PATCH -mm] PM: add /sys/power documentation to Documentation/ABI

From: Greg KH
Date: Wed Aug 30 2006 - 18:49:34 EST


On Wed, Aug 30, 2006 at 03:32:42PM -0700, Andrew Morton wrote:
>
> This ABI/ thing rather snuck under my radar (I saw it go past, but a lot of
> things go past).

It had a lot of review the first time around. The second and third had
relatively little.

> It'll be good if it works, but it is going to take quite a lot of thought,
> effort and maintainer vigilance to be successful and to avoid becoming
> rotware.

I agree.

> I wonder how hard it would be to write a script which parses a diff, works
> out if it touches ABI things, complain if it doesn't alter
> Documentation/ABI/*? Not very - it's just a matter of defining a suitable
> regexp.

That would be good to have.

> What _should_ be documented in there, anyway?
>
> - syscalls, obviously.
>
> - /proc? If so, everything, or are there exceptions?
>
> - /sys? If so, everything, or are there exceptions?
>
> - ioctl numbers and payloads?
>
> - netlink messages?
>
> - ethtool thingies? netdev interface names? /proc/iomem identifiers?
> module names? kernel-thread comm[] contents? The ABI is pretty fat.
>
> scary.

Yes, our ABI is scary. And yes, all of the above is needed to be
documented if we want to have a handle on this thing.

It is probably something that we can throw at the janitors list for the
existing stuff to get some help.

thanks,

greg k-h
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