From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1161140AbWASBRQ (ORCPT ); Wed, 18 Jan 2006 20:17:16 -0500 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S1161139AbWASBRQ (ORCPT ); Wed, 18 Jan 2006 20:17:16 -0500 Received: from dsl027-180-168.sfo1.dsl.speakeasy.net ([216.27.180.168]:46270 "EHLO sunset.davemloft.net") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1161140AbWASBRQ (ORCPT ); Wed, 18 Jan 2006 20:17:16 -0500 Date: Wed, 18 Jan 2006 17:17:16 -0800 (PST) Message-Id: <20060118.171716.04998471.davem@davemloft.net> To: bos@pathscale.com Cc: akpm@osdl.org, rdreier@cisco.com, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, greg@kroah.com, openib-general@openib.org Subject: Re: RFC: ipath ioctls and their replacements From: "David S. Miller" In-Reply-To: <1137633256.4757.225.camel@serpentine.pathscale.com> References: <1137631411.4757.218.camel@serpentine.pathscale.com> <20060118.164839.74431051.davem@davemloft.net> <1137633256.4757.225.camel@serpentine.pathscale.com> X-Mailer: Mew version 4.2.53 on Emacs 21.4 / Mule 5.0 (SAKAKI) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: Text/Plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org From: Bryan O'Sullivan Date: Wed, 18 Jan 2006 17:14:16 -0800 > That looks doable, but to my eyes, the netlink interface looks both > more cumbersome and less reliable than ioctl. At least it > apparently lets us do arbitrarily peculiar things :-) It's going to give you strict typing, and extensible attributes for the configuration attributes you define. So if you determine later "oh we need to add this knob for changing X" you can do that without breaking the existing interface. With ioctl() that is usually impossible or unreasonably hard to accomplish. Try not to get discouraged, give it a shot :)