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Date: Mon, 24 Jan 2011 09:19:16 +1100 From: Andrew Hendry <andrew.hendry@...il.com> To: Nick Bowler <nbowler@...iptictech.com> Cc: Arnd Bergmann <arnd@...db.de>, Linus Torvalds <torvalds@...ux-foundation.org>, LKML <linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org> Subject: Re: [PATCH 4/4] BKL: move CONFIG_BKL to staging Most the x.25 BKLs have patches accepted over the past few months. There are 3 remaining in send, receive and destroy that I haven't had time to work through. If anyone wants to take a look at them I can help test, but I wont have time until march to focus on them myself. Andrew On Thu, Jan 20, 2011 at 5:21 AM, Nick Bowler <nbowler@...iptictech.com> wrote: > On 2011-01-19 17:17 +0100, Arnd Bergmann wrote: >> On Wednesday 19 January 2011, Nick Bowler wrote: >> > I think this patch is not very nice. It will cause working kernel >> > configurations to turn into broken kernel configurations when the user >> > does 'make oldconfig', with no warning. >> > >> > These drivers that use the BKL work fine. Removing working features >> > with no adequate replacement available seems like a serious regression >> > to me. >> >> I wouldn't call it a serious regression since the code is still there >> and both the symptom and the solution are rather obvious. > > Well, the code wouldn't still be there if they're removed in 2.6.39 as > stated in your patch description. While it may be obvious to people > like you and me who know what the BKL is, I don't it's obvious to > everyone that the cause of "my system doesn't boot anymore" is "oh, > someone moved a dependency of a driver I've been using without issue for > the past 5 years to staging!" > >> What's more important is to make any people still relying on the code >> aware that it's going away unless someone fixes it, so they have the >> chance to send patches or pay someone to fix it for them. > > Shouldn't the onus for fixing *working* drivers (or encouraging others > to fix them) lie with the person(s) who are so keen to kill off features > that they use? > > Surely we don't need to break oldconfig just to raise awareness that > these drivers use deprecated features? > >> The remaining drivers that are still relying on the BKL are very >> rarely used and for the less obscure ones (ufs, ipx and x.25), people >> have volunteered to fix them (though I have seen no proper patches >> for these yet). >> >> For the rest, I suppose if nobody complains, they can actually go >> away, according to the logic that if nobody is using them, they most >> likely are broken anyway and more a security risk than they are worth. > > Notwithstanding any of the above, one release cycle hardly seems like > enough time to infer from "nobody complained" that "not a single person > uses this driver." Surely people concerned with security issues in code > that they don't use can just... not enable it? Nobody's forcing anyone > to use these drivers. > > Neither the BKL nor any of these drivers are even mentioned in the > feature removal schedule yet. > > -- > Nick Bowler, Elliptic Technologies (http://www.elliptictech.com/) > -- > To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in > the body of a message to majordomo@...r.kernel.org > More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html > Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/ > -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@...r.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
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