Messages in this thread | | | From | Linus Torvalds <> | Date | Mon, 20 Feb 2012 21:32:09 -0800 | Subject | Re: Linux 3.3-rc4 |
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On Mon, Feb 20, 2012 at 9:28 PM, H. Peter Anvin <hpa@zytor.com> wrote: > > Holes are highly undesirable for another reason: they create security > holes where kernel information leaks out.
.. however, this is not an argument for adding a *new* interface.
You are still stuck handling the old one, so adding a new interface without holes doesn't help *anything*. It's just a bad idea.
So we're stuck with the interfaces we have. Don't say "let's fix the problems by adding new ones". It doesn't work, it doesn't solve anything, and all it results in is even *more* interfaces to maintain and find bugs in.
It's also a major pain for testing, since different people will invariably use different interfaces. So a person running an older distro will see a bug that the maintainer cannot reproduce, because they maintainer has in the meantime updated to all the new and "improved" interfaces.
So "new and improved" is just bad. Fix the existing ones, instead of saying "oops, that was a bad interface so let's make a new one". Always.
Linus
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