From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: David Laight Subject: RE: [PATCH net-next 0/5] SCTP updates Date: Wed, 9 Jul 2014 11:12:06 +0000 Message-ID: <063D6719AE5E284EB5DD2968C1650D6D1726F0E9@AcuExch.aculab.com> References: <1404507908-6949-1-git-send-email-dborkman@redhat.com> <20140708111408.GA23026@hmsreliant.think-freely.org> <53BBFAA6.80408@redhat.com> <20140708144127.GB23026@hmsreliant.think-freely.org> <53BD1211.4080504@redhat.com> <20140709104958.GA3784@hmsreliant.think-freely.org> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="Windows-1252" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8BIT Cc: "davem@davemloft.net" , "geirola@gmail.com" , "netdev@vger.kernel.org" , "linux-sctp@vger.kernel.org" To: 'Neil Horman' , Daniel Borkmann Return-path: Received: from mx0.aculab.com ([213.249.233.131]:57820 "HELO mx0.aculab.com" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with SMTP id S1755313AbaGILNk convert rfc822-to-8bit (ORCPT ); Wed, 9 Jul 2014 07:13:40 -0400 Received: from mx0.aculab.com ([127.0.0.1]) by localhost (mx0.aculab.com [127.0.0.1]) (amavisd-new, port 10024) with SMTP id 04345-06 for ; Wed, 9 Jul 2014 12:13:31 +0100 (BST) In-Reply-To: <20140709104958.GA3784@hmsreliant.think-freely.org> Content-Language: en-US Sender: netdev-owner@vger.kernel.org List-ID: From: Neil Horman > > In how many years do you plan a removal ... I think we're stuck with uapi > > basically forever as we don't want to break old binaries, no? ;/ > > > I thought we could remove things on a schedule if we followed the deprecation > process, but that may just be for sysfs. Regardless, it would still be nice to > inform people they are using an older api. The issue here is that it is an application API, not a system programming one. I'd guess that most sysfs stuff is only used by programs that are released as part of a Linux distribution - and thus code that is likely to be release with a matching kernel. These sccp structures are much more likely to be used by 'proper' 3rd party applications, targeted at multiple kernel versions - possibly in binary form. We compile applications on the oldest linux version we think our customers are using - otherwise we'd have to release multiple copies. So I don't think they can be deprecated (with warnings from the kernel) for a long time, perhaps 5 or 10 years! The first stage would be (somehow) to generate warnings when applications are compiled. Only when that has been in place for some time would it make sense to generate kernel warnings. David From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: David Laight Date: Wed, 09 Jul 2014 11:12:06 +0000 Subject: RE: [PATCH net-next 0/5] SCTP updates Message-Id: <063D6719AE5E284EB5DD2968C1650D6D1726F0E9@AcuExch.aculab.com> List-Id: References: <1404507908-6949-1-git-send-email-dborkman@redhat.com> <20140708111408.GA23026@hmsreliant.think-freely.org> <53BBFAA6.80408@redhat.com> <20140708144127.GB23026@hmsreliant.think-freely.org> <53BD1211.4080504@redhat.com> <20140709104958.GA3784@hmsreliant.think-freely.org> In-Reply-To: <20140709104958.GA3784@hmsreliant.think-freely.org> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit To: 'Neil Horman' , Daniel Borkmann Cc: "davem@davemloft.net" , "geirola@gmail.com" , "netdev@vger.kernel.org" , "linux-sctp@vger.kernel.org" From: Neil Horman > > In how many years do you plan a removal ... I think we're stuck with uapi > > basically forever as we don't want to break old binaries, no? ;/ > > > I thought we could remove things on a schedule if we followed the deprecation > process, but that may just be for sysfs. Regardless, it would still be nice to > inform people they are using an older api. The issue here is that it is an application API, not a system programming one. I'd guess that most sysfs stuff is only used by programs that are released as part of a Linux distribution - and thus code that is likely to be release with a matching kernel. These sccp structures are much more likely to be used by 'proper' 3rd party applications, targeted at multiple kernel versions - possibly in binary form. We compile applications on the oldest linux version we think our customers are using - otherwise we'd have to release multiple copies. So I don't think they can be deprecated (with warnings from the kernel) for a long time, perhaps 5 or 10 years! The first stage would be (somehow) to generate warnings when applications are compiled. Only when that has been in place for some time would it make sense to generate kernel warnings. David