From: "Michael Kerrisk" <mtk-manpages@gmx.net>
To: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>
Cc: akpm@osdl.org, ebiederm@xmission.com,
linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, janak@us.ibm.com,
viro@ftp.linux.org.uk, hch@lst.de, ak@muc.de, paulus@samba.org
Subject: Re: [PATCH] unshare: Cleanup up the sys_unshare interface before we are committed.
Date: Fri, 17 Mar 2006 02:11:55 +0100 (MET) [thread overview]
Message-ID: <29085.1142557915@www064.gmx.net> (raw)
In-Reply-To: Pine.LNX.4.64.0603161555210.3618@g5.osdl.org
Linus,
> On Fri, 17 Mar 2006, Michael Kerrisk wrote:
> > >
> > > My personal opinion is that having a different set of flags is more
> > > confusing
> >
> > How is it confusing? And who is it confusing for?
>
> It's confusing because
> - it's just more flags to keep track of
Agreed, there is a "confusion cost" to that.
> - it's all the same issues that clone() has
At the moment, but possibly not in the future (if one day
usnhare() needs a flag that has no analogue in clone()).
> - it's an opportunity for future incoherence
Not sure what future incoherence you mean here. Anyway,
we inject some incoherence *now* (some unshare() flags reverse
their clone() counterparts, one does not).
> > It will potentially require kernel developers to think for just
> > a moment about what is going on. But why care about them --
> > they don't have to *use* this interface; userland programmers do.
>
> All the confusion is equally a userland issue, don't try to just enforce
> your own opinions as somehow being "facts" by repeating them over
> and over again.
I'm not trying to do that. I've repeated my statements
because I haven't seen any clear counterarguments. I have a
particular opinion about what constitutes confusion, and it
comes from a perspective that focuses on the kernel-userland
interface. I agree that it does create some "confusion cost"
for userland programmers to add new flags. But _in my opinion_
that cost is outweighed by the greater "confusion costs" that
I have described. Eric seemed to agree. Unfortunately for my
argument, you and Janak don't ;-).
Cheers,
Michael
--
Michael Kerrisk
maintainer of Linux man pages Sections 2, 3, 4, 5, and 7
Want to help with man page maintenance?
Grab the latest tarball at
ftp://ftp.win.tue.nl/pub/linux-local/manpages/,
read the HOWTOHELP file and grep the source
files for 'FIXME'.
next prev parent reply other threads:[~2006-03-17 1:12 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 20+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
[not found] <1359.1142546753@www064.gmx.net>
2006-03-16 23:34 ` [PATCH] unshare: Cleanup up the sys_unshare interface before we are committed Michael Kerrisk
2006-03-16 23:57 ` Linus Torvalds
2006-03-17 1:11 ` Michael Kerrisk [this message]
2006-03-17 5:42 ` Linus Torvalds
2006-03-17 16:04 ` Eric W. Biederman
2006-03-17 16:49 ` Janak Desai
2006-03-17 20:27 ` Michael Kerrisk
2006-03-18 18:41 ` Eric W. Biederman
2006-03-18 19:54 ` Janak Desai
2006-03-19 13:58 ` Eric W. Biederman
2006-03-18 23:41 ` Paul Mackerras
2006-03-20 4:45 Albert Cahalan
2006-03-20 16:52 ` Eric W. Biederman
-- strict thread matches above, loose matches on Subject: below --
2006-03-16 16:49 Eric W. Biederman
2006-03-16 19:40 ` Michael Kerrisk
2006-03-16 20:33 ` Andrew Morton
2006-03-16 20:41 ` Linus Torvalds
2006-03-16 21:58 ` Eric W. Biederman
2006-03-16 22:19 ` Andrew Morton
2006-03-16 21:36 ` Janak Desai
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