On Sat, 14 Dec 2002, Russell King wrote:

On Sat, Dec 14, 2002 at 08:05:30PM +0530, arun4linux wrote:

quoted

Interfaces should NEVER change in patch level versions.
Just *DO NOT DO IT*.
I do agree on this.

Rubbish.

Think about what you've just said.  Patch level version changes are
things like 2.5.43 to 2.5.44 or 2.4.19 to 2.4.20.

You are saying that we shouldn't change any interfaces between (eg)
2.5.43 and 2.5.44, but we should change every interface we want to
change between 2.4.15 and 2.5.0.

This is obviously completely bogus.  2.5 is a _development_ tree.
Everyone should expect anything, including interfaces to change
between each development patch level.

quoted

This is a common complaint about linux kernel developers. And this always
gives an insecure feeling  :-) for the device driver or kernel module
programmers. 

If interfaces are changed without extremely good reason between two
_stable_ patch level versions, that would be a bug.

There have been a few during 2.4... The alloc_kiovec stuff for instance 
and zap_page_range. 2.2 was much more stable.

Interface changes in development series is (or atleast should be to 
everyone using linux) a known "feature".

Regards,
-- 
  Steffen Persvold   |       Scali AS      
 mailto:sp@scali.com |  http://www.scali.com
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