linux-kernel - Re: [PATCH 1/5] Renaming weak prng invocations - prandom_bytes_state, prandom_u32

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Message-ID: <CANn89iJtK4m1cWvCwp=L_rEOEBa+B1kLZJAw0D9_cYPQcAj+Mw@mail.gmail.com>
Date:   Wed, 14 Dec 2022 16:15:49 +0100
From:   Eric Dumazet <edumazet@...gle.com>
To:     Stanislaw Gruszka <stanislaw.gruszka@...ux.intel.com>
Cc:     "Jason A. Donenfeld" <Jason@...c4.com>,
        david.keisarschm@...l.huji.ac.il,
        Vignesh Raghavendra <vigneshr@...com>,
        Peter Zijlstra <peterz@...radead.org>,
        Dave Hansen <dave.hansen@...ux.intel.com>,
        Rasmus Villemoes <linux@...musvillemoes.dk>,
        Alexei Starovoitov <ast@...nel.org>,
        dri-devel@...ts.freedesktop.org, Song Liu <song@...nel.org>,
        linux-mtd@...ts.infradead.org, Stanislav Fomichev <sdf@...gle.com>,
        Miquel Raynal <miquel.raynal@...tlin.com>,
        Roman Gushchin <roman.gushchin@...ux.dev>,
        Christoph Lameter <cl@...ux.com>,
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        Richard Weinberger <richard@....at>, x86@...nel.org,
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        Martin KaFai Lau <martin.lau@...ux.dev>,
        "David S. Miller" <davem@...emloft.net>
Subject: Re: [PATCH 1/5] Renaming weak prng invocations - prandom_bytes_state, prandom_u32_state

On Wed, Dec 14, 2022 at 1:34 PM Stanislaw Gruszka
<stanislaw.gruszka@...ux.intel.com> wrote:
>
> On Mon, Dec 12, 2022 at 03:35:20PM +0100, Jason A. Donenfeld wrote:
> > Please CC me on future revisions.
> >
> > As of 6.2, the prandom namespace is *only* for predictable randomness.
> > There's no need to rename anything. So nack on this patch 1/5.
>
> It is not obvious (for casual developers like me) that p in prandom
> stands for predictable. Some renaming would be useful IMHO.

Renaming makes backports more complicated, because stable teams will
have to 'undo' name changes.
Stable teams are already overwhelmed by the amount of backports, and
silly merge conflicts.

Take another example :

u64 timecounter_read(struct timecounter *tc)

You would think this function would read the timecounter, right ?

Well, it _updates_ many fields from @tc, so a 'better name' would also
be useful.

linux kernel is not for casual readers.