Messages in this thread | | | From | Bret Indrelee <> | Subject | RE: Binary drivers | Date | Thu, 9 Dec 1999 10:05:13 -0600 |
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Brandon S. Allbery KF8NH [mailto:allbery@kf8nh.apk.net] wrote: > In message > <Pine.GSO.4.10.9912082036070.373-100000@weyl.math.psu.edu>, > Alexande > r Viro writes: > +----- > | was. FPOS lingered around until _NOW_. Killed in > 2.3.30-pre7. Should it be > | left around forever? I don't think so. Sorry. If it means > recompile - so > | be it. > +--->8 > > My point was that a recompile is fine. Breaking the *source* > interface is > problematic. (For those who fear that source compatibility > can lead to > binary compatibility and dislike the latter: you can make > source-compatible > changes that break binary conpatibility, the most obvious > being rearranging > structure elements.)
Which breaks source compatibility as well. If you have something like:
struct vmoperations_struct btp_vm_ops = { bt_vmopen, bt_vmclose, NULL, NULL, NULL, NULL, bt_vmnopage, NULL, NULL, NULL };
Change the order of elements so that the nopage operator is the third element rather than the 7th element and the source breaks. Hopefully you had complete prototypes and the types were different in some way so that the compiler can detect the problem.
In any case, you broke both the source and binary.
> The main thing I draw from your example is that nobody > garbage-collected > smap in a timely fashion. Announce the old interface's > deprecation in the > (stable) release where the new interface first shows up, and > then *remove* > it at the next major release.
I think you mean remove it in the next development release. If it was in 2.2 and is obsolete, you want to remove it in 2.3. It is always the odd releases of Linux that are supposed to break things.
-Bret
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