[fat doesn't compile... ]
> Sorry, but if the second most frequently used file system does not
> compile, then don't release it. I am not counting the pseudo file
> systems proc and pts here, obviously.
Felix,
For you (*) and many other people, x.y.z kernels with y an odd number
are NOT RELEASED. You can access them in much the same way as you can
access "released" (y is even) kernels, but don't be fooled. They are
not released!
The goal of 2.3.7 was to test the page-cache (whatever) changes, and
to be able to test them, one filesystem (ext2) was updated to talk to
the new interface. If this wouldn't work at all, then the changes
would have to be reverted. And if the other filesystems had been
modified by then, the work would have been for nothing.
Programming is a tricky job. The good people know when to break
interfaces. Linus sure does. If I have a function
doit (struct mystruct *ms, int flag)
where flag indicates wether or not to do something. But after a while
I notice that besides the "doit or not" I want more possibilities. And
the most logical way to do it is to have a "flags" argument. The
problem is that what used to be "0" now is a flag, and what used to
be flag = 1, is now "none of the flags set". I could just rewrite
the prototype
doit (struct mystruct *ms, int flags)
but that would mean that everything still compiles, but is wrong. If I
change the function name to "doit2" or something like that, we get the
compiler to warn us where stuff needs fixing. Much better than not
working at run-time.
I got a tarball of commercial sources yesterday. I made sure that it
compiles without warnings with gcc -Wall. I fixed about 100 little
problems. Just made the warning go away. And one of them was NOT
minor. A plain bug. And the compiler told me where to look. I did NOT
read all 65k source code lines....
Roger.
(*) You've clearly demonstrated by now that development kernels are
not for you.
-- ** R.E.Wolff@BitWizard.nl ** http://www.BitWizard.nl/ ** +31-15-2137555 ** *-- BitWizard writes Linux device drivers for any device you may have! --* ------ Microsoft SELLS you Windows, Linux GIVES you the whole house ------
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