Re: [PATCH net-next] Remove DECnet support from kernel

From: Jiri Slaby
Date: Mon Jan 09 2023 - 02:05:18 EST


On 18. 08. 22, 2:43, Stephen Hemminger wrote:
DECnet is an obsolete network protocol that receives more attention
from kernel janitors than users. It belongs in computer protocol
history museum not in Linux kernel.

It has been "Orphaned" in kernel since 2010. The iproute2 support
for DECnet was dropped in 5.0 release. The documentation link on
Sourceforge says it is abandoned there as well.

Leave the UAPI alone to keep userspace programs compiling.
This means that there is still an empty neighbour table
for AF_DECNET.

The table of /proc/sys/net entries was updated to match
current directories and reformatted to be alphabetical.

Signed-off-by: Stephen Hemminger <stephen@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Acked-by: David Ahern <dsahern@xxxxxxxxxx>

...
include/uapi/linux/dn.h | 149 -
include/uapi/linux/netfilter_decnet.h | 72 -

Hi,

this breaks userspace. Some projects include linux/dn.h:

https://codesearch.debian.net/search?q=include.*linux%2Fdn.h&literal=0


I found Trinity fails to build:
net/proto-decnet.c:5:10: fatal error: linux/dn.h: No such file or directory
5 | #include <linux/dn.h>



Should we provide the above as empty files?

thanks,
--
js
suse labs