Messages in this thread | | | Date | Thu, 6 Jan 2005 15:26:21 -0800 | From | Andrew Morton <> | Subject | Re: [PATCH] fs: Restore files_lock and set_fs_root exports |
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Guys, the technical arguments are all of course correct. But the fact remains that we broke things without any notice. (Yes, perhaps someone did say something at sometime, but the affected party didn't know, and it's our job to make sure that they knew). (These exports were removed in October - the IBM guys need to work out why it took so long to detect the breakage).
I think the exports should be restored. So does Linus ("Not that I like it all that much, but I don't think we should break existing modules unless we have a very specific reason to break just those modules.").
Which begs the question "how do we ever get rid of these things when we have no projected date for Linux-2.8"?
I'd propose:
a) Create Documentation/feature-removal-schedule.txt which describes things which are going away, when, why, who is involved, etc.
b) Mark things deprecated where appropriate.
c) For module exports it would be nice if we could get the module loader to print a message "module foo.o uses deprecated symbol files_lock". Dunno how hard that would be.
Alternatively perhaps we could arrange for the symbol to be marked deprecated if it's used from a module:
#ifdef MODULE #define deprecated_if_module __deprecated #else #define deprecated_if_module #endif
Just something to really draw people's attention to the fact that their code will break at a well-defined date.
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