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Date: Mon, 18 Oct 2010 14:43:57 -0700 From: "H. Peter Anvin" <hpa@...or.com> To: David Rientjes <rientjes@...gle.com> CC: Thomas Gleixner <tglx@...utronix.de>, Frederic Weisbecker <fweisbec@...il.com>, LKML <linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org>, Ingo Molnar <mingo@...e.hu> Subject: Re: [PATCH 1/2] x86: Cleanup TIF value gaps in shift range On 10/18/2010 02:36 PM, David Rientjes wrote: > On Mon, 18 Oct 2010, H. Peter Anvin wrote: > >> The problem is that someone exports something as debugging information, >> then someone else suddenly thinks it's an ABI. I believe the same >> complainant in the past has objected to changing of formatting in dmesg, >> which is equally insane. >> > > It's not insane if there is no other way to ascertain that information. > If it's available through sysfs or debugfs (and, even better, documented > as part of the API in Documentation/ABI), then I don't think anyone would > object to changing a log message. But I don't think all log messages > should be fair game under some general principle if they are being changed > (instead of just extending it) without a compelling reason, such as > technically being incorrect in its present form. YES IT IS. In fact, it is completely and totally bananas bonkers. By not pushing for a proper maintainable ABI, you will have an indefinite forward compatibility problem, and when predictably it breaks, you'll complain. This is, however, backwards -- the right thing would have been to say "I need this, this isn't available, I should add a maintainable API and push it upstream", and perhaps add log parsing as a backwards-compatibility solution. -hpa -- 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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