From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S262224AbUK3R7f (ORCPT ); Tue, 30 Nov 2004 12:59:35 -0500 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S262233AbUK3R7f (ORCPT ); Tue, 30 Nov 2004 12:59:35 -0500 Received: from canuck.infradead.org ([205.233.218.70]:56071 "EHLO canuck.infradead.org") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S262224AbUK3Rwv (ORCPT ); Tue, 30 Nov 2004 12:52:51 -0500 Subject: Re: [RFC] Splitting kernel headers and deprecating __KERNEL__ From: David Woodhouse To: Linus Torvalds Cc: Alexandre Oliva , Paul Mackerras , Greg KH , Matthew Wilcox , David Howells , hch@infradead.org, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, libc-hacker@sources.redhat.com In-Reply-To: References: <19865.1101395592@redhat.com> <20041125165433.GA2849@parcelfarce.linux.theplanet.co.uk> <1101406661.8191.9390.camel@hades.cambridge.redhat.com> <20041127032403.GB10536@kroah.com> <16810.24893.747522.656073@cargo.ozlabs.ibm.com> <1101828924.26071.172.camel@hades.cambridge.redhat.com> <1101832116.26071.236.camel@hades.cambridge.redhat.com> Content-Type: text/plain Message-Id: <1101837135.26071.380.camel@hades.cambridge.redhat.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 X-Mailer: Ximian Evolution 1.4.6 (1.4.6-2.dwmw2.1) Date: Tue, 30 Nov 2004 17:52:15 +0000 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Spam-Score: 0.0 (/) X-SRS-Rewrite: SMTP reverse-path rewritten from by canuck.infradead.org See http://www.infradead.org/rpr.html Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org On Tue, 2004-11-30 at 08:53 -0800, Linus Torvalds wrote: > I've said this at least three times: if you can point to a _specific_ > thing you want to move, go wild. I think the big waste in this discussion > has been that there have _not_ been specific suggestions, just total > sound-bites like "wouldn't it be great to move things to 'include/kapi'". I've already done some -- see the contents of include/mtd/ for example, which contain only the parts which userspace should see, while include/linux/mtd/ is now entirely kernel-private stuff. We were trying to reach a consensus on where new header files can be put and indeed whether they should be split at all. We can all disappear for a week or two and come back with a completely sanitised set of header files with the userspace stuff in a separate directory and _then_ and be told "no, we don't like that; do it differently". A bunch of us have even made a start on such things to prove the concept. Presenting it as a fait accompli just to have it rejected isn't much fun though -- the idea was to get some form of agreement in principle beforehand, then collaborate on actually doing it. > Note that even _if_ you have a specific thing in mind, I want to see that > somebody would say "yes, we'd use that organization". I would not be > surprised at all if glibc people said that they can't really use any > re-organization anyway, since they need to support old kernel setups too. The idea in the proposal which David posted, which seemed perfectly specific enough to me, was to move all the user-visible parts to separate header files in a separate directory. Those same header files would also be included by the kernel-private headers. This would be done in such a way that it's a drop-in replacement for the existing sanitised glibc-kernheaders package. Of _course_ it needs to be usable without pain by the glibc people. We can just go ahead and _do_ that if necessary, but it seemed like a sane plan to agree on how to do it beforehand. -- dwmw2