Messages in this thread | ![/](/images/icornerl.gif) | | Date | Mon, 14 Apr 2003 12:51:43 -0700 (PDT) | From | Linus Torvalds <> | Subject | Re: [PATCH] kdevt-diff |
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On Mon, 14 Apr 2003, Roman Zippel wrote: > > > But at the same time, for backwards compatibility clearly they have to > > show up in the _old_ places too. Which really implies that there needs to > > be a mapping function for the old numbers into the proper block device > > queues etc, so that people can still use the old /dev nodes when they > > upgrade their kernel. > > Why should the kernel care about this?
Because a kernel that cannot be used with old filesystems is a _useless_ kernel as far as I'm concerned.
Backwards compatibility is _important_. It's HUGELY important. It's just possibly more important than anything else the kernel ever can do.
And new kernels need to be able to seamlessly boot into a disk-image that may still need to be used from an old kernel. Without any magic going on.
We can discontinue the old IDE/SCSI majors one or two stable releases _after_ we've switched over to a global "disk major". In other words, that's about five years down the line after you shouldnä't have to care any more.
Linus
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