linux-kernel - Re: Linux 3.3-rc4

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Message-ID: <CA+55aFz3e8OMRiprJmhZ_Y6SMmDCrmW18et51s24_nnn2WoT-A@mail.gmail.com>
Date:	Tue, 21 Feb 2012 15:19:43 -0800
From:	Linus Torvalds <torvalds@...ux-foundation.org>
To:	Eric Dumazet <eric.dumazet@...il.com>
Cc:	Thomas Meyer <thomas@...3r.de>, Al Viro <viro@...iv.linux.org.uk>,
	Linux Kernel Mailing List <linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org>,
	linux-fsdevel@...r.kernel.org
Subject: Re: Linux 3.3-rc4

On Tue, Feb 21, 2012 at 3:10 PM, Eric Dumazet <eric.dumazet@...il.com> wrote:
>
> Yep, this is what I thought, but when this was raised last september,
> both Andrew and Andi disagreed.
>
> https://lkml.org/lkml/2011/10/6/389

Well, I agree that it *could* break things, but considering that at
least glibc does the sign-exitension, any code that puts a large
number in the 'timeout' field would *already* have broken.

Which is why I think we should first try to fix the system call
interface - because it's the simpler patch, and it's the
RightThing(tm) to do from a standards standpoint. It's also almost
guaranteed to work, exactly because of how glibc already does that
conversion.

But if something does break - however unlikely and perverse the code
has to be to be able to do that - we'd clearly have to undo that "just
fix sys_poll()" and use Thomas' patch to have a compat_sys_poll()
instead.

I just don't like the notion of doing that silly compat thing when it
really shouldn't be needed to begin with.

                   Linus
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