Messages in this thread | | | Date | Wed, 02 Apr 2008 00:47:41 -0700 | From | Mike Travis <> | Subject | Re: [PATCH 0/3] x86: add cpuset_scnprintf function |
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> However doing this is worse in my view than simply breaking the format > outright, unilaterally and irrevocably. If you just flat out stick a > fork in an API and break it hard on some release, then at least user > space knows that it must adapt or die at that version. If you hand > user space the means to break that API, then any properly and > defensively written user code has to be prepared to deal with both API > flavors, and the majority of user space code is broken half the time, > when run on a system with the API variant it wasn't expecting. More > over, you end up with apps having "toilet seat wars" with each other: > you left it up and it should be down; no you left it down and it should > be up. Not a pretty sight. > > Perhaps I totally misunderstand this patchset ? >
Hi,
I wanted to not break current apps unmercifully, but perhaps I should default it to the "non-compatible" mode (and adjust the schedstat version to indicate this)? [It's the only output that I found that seemed to care.]
And if users have apps that they can't convert, they can revert to the "old" (compatible) method of outputs. I know if I'm a user and I'm really interested in understanding the outputs when there's hundreds and hundreds of cpus, then the more compact format is much more useful.
I can't believe there hasn't been many changes in all of these outputs. Like what happened before Hyperthreading, or 3rd level caches, or ? Even the new Intel announcements for Nehalem may introduce more changes in what's important in the output information. Plus I was under the impression that one of the basic tenets of Linux was that API's can and will change?
Thanks, Mike
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