Re: [-mm patch] unexport sys_{open,read}

From: Rene Herman
Date: Mon Sep 10 2007 - 19:04:22 EST


On 09/11/2007 12:41 AM, Adrian Bunk wrote:

On Tue, Sep 11, 2007 at 12:15:56AM +0200, Rene Herman wrote:
On 09/11/2007 12:18 AM, Adrian Bunk wrote:

On Mon, Sep 10, 2007 at 01:17:59PM -0700, Andrew Morton wrote:
There is no benefit in making some rigid set of rules.
Is is considered beneficial to provide API stability for external modules or not?
If I may...

Yes, it is. Just not at any significant cost and Andrew is saying that he considers the _UNUSED() thing not significant.

But there is no API stability for external modules this way.

I agree that doing things only half is semi-regularly worse than doing them not at all, and this specific case might be the worst example of all, as I read that using sys_open/read is actively harmful, so, well...

I read the thread since I tend to keep lots of external crap around. Not in any way that would mean I'd have any grounds for complaining about anything; mostly just driver stuff in various states of completeness that I never seem to get around to cleaning up enough to submit to anyone.

But as such, I can comment on the fact that I'm much more likely to notice the warning than I am to notice a thread on LKML, say. How much more likely I'd be to then also actually do anything about it before it just breaks anyway is another matter, but again, well...

It simply doesn't make sense to give the few sys_open() abusers even more grace period while changes to the IRQ API affecting nearly everyone are allowed without any requirements of ensuring API stability.

I'm not a fan of API stability for external modules, but if API stability was considered important it should be done consequently and not only for some patches that have the bad fate of having to go through Andrew to Linus.

In this case I believe it makes sense to just rip it out, but generally it doesn't need to be such a fully robotic yes/no decision, I'd say.

Rene.
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