From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S964843AbWDZT0U (ORCPT ); Wed, 26 Apr 2006 15:26:20 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S1750883AbWDZT0U (ORCPT ); Wed, 26 Apr 2006 15:26:20 -0400 Received: from mail1.webmaster.com ([216.152.64.168]:15365 "EHLO mail1.webmaster.com") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1750821AbWDZT0T (ORCPT ); Wed, 26 Apr 2006 15:26:19 -0400 From: "David Schwartz" To: Subject: RE: C++ pushback Date: Wed, 26 Apr 2006 12:25:19 -0700 Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Priority: 3 (Normal) X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook IMO, Build 9.0.6604 (9.0.2911.0) In-Reply-To: <20060426034252.69467.qmail@web81908.mail.mud.yahoo.com> X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V6.00.2900.2869 Importance: Normal X-Authenticated-Sender: joelkatz@webmaster.com X-Spam-Processed: mail1.webmaster.com, Wed, 26 Apr 2006 12:21:20 -0700 (not processed: message from trusted or authenticated source) X-MDRemoteIP: 206.171.168.138 X-Return-Path: davids@webmaster.com X-MDaemon-Deliver-To: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Reply-To: davids@webmaster.com X-MDAV-Processed: mail1.webmaster.com, Wed, 26 Apr 2006 12:21:22 -0700 Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org > > As for remembering new names, that's a load of complete crap and I > > find it hard to believe that you're raising the argument for honest > > reasons. > The scale of the kernel, the number and churn of developers, and the > importance of not breaking things in a stable kernel tend to argue > against you. Humans develop the kernel. Humans remember names well. > You may think that's arbitrary, but when you change naming across the > entire kernel, you confuse a very large and diverse group of people who > do this because they enjoy it. It's hard enough when this has to happen > for useful or necessary reasons; you're asking the kernel developers to > accept it for a completely arbitrary whim that they have rejected > successfully several times in the past. C++ has how many additional reserved words? I believe the list is delete, friend, private, protected, public, template, throw, try, and catch. Renaming every symbol that currently has a name from this list to the corresponding name with a trailing underscore is an easily understood consistent change. That you would argue against is with things like "not breaking things" is a load of complete crap. > You want C++? Fork the freely > available source code at a convenient point and convert it yourself. As > long as it stays GPL, you're perfectly within your rights so to do. > Hobson's choice is yours. Belaboring this point is silly. Making ridiculous arguments like that a consistent change of a small set of names is "breaking things in a stable kernel" is silly. And, FWIW, it isn't even necessary to change those names. That is only needed to compile the kernel in C++, which is not what anyone was talking about. Supporting C++ modules, for example, would work fine even if the kernel had variables called 'class' or 'private'. (Though things could be done a lot more cleanly if it didn't as it would require some remapping before and after compilation.) DS