linux-kernel - Re: [ck] Re: -mm merge plans for 2.6.23

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Date:	Thu, 26 Jul 2007 16:29:33 -0700 (PDT)
From:	david@...g.hm
To:	Jeff Garzik <jeff@...zik.org>
cc:	Dirk Schoebel <dirk@...i-und-dirk.de>, ck@....kolivas.org,
	Nick Piggin <nickpiggin@...oo.com.au>,
	Ray Lee <ray-lk@...rabbit.org>,
	Eric St-Laurent <ericstl34@...patico.ca>,
	linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org, linux-mm@...ck.org,
	Paul Jackson <pj@....com>, Jesper Juhl <jesper.juhl@...il.com>,
	Andrew Morton <akpm@...ux-foundation.org>,
	Rene Herman <rene.herman@...il.com>
Subject: Re: [ck] Re: -mm merge plans for 2.6.23

On Thu, 26 Jul 2007, Jeff Garzik wrote:

> Dirk Schoebel wrote:
>>  as long as the maintainer follows the kernel development things can be
>>  left in, if the maintainer can't follow anymore they are taken out quite
>>  fast again. (This statement mostly counts for parts of the kernel where a
>>  choice is possible or the coding overhead of making such choice possible
>>  is quite low.)
>
>
> This is just not good engineering.
>
> It is axiomatic that it is easy to add code, but difficult to remove code. 
> It takes -years- to remove code that no one uses.  Long after the maintainer 
> disappears, the users (and bug reports!) remain.

I'll point out that the code that's so hard to remove is the code that 
exposes an API to userspace.

code that's an internal implementation (like a couple of the things being 
discussed) gets removed much faster.

> It is also axiomatic that adding code, particularly core code, often 
> exponentially increases complexity.

this is true and may be a valid argument (depending on how large and how 
intrusive the proposed patch is)

David Lang
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