From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1762673AbXGYWSR (ORCPT ); Wed, 25 Jul 2007 18:18:17 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S1757244AbXGYWSF (ORCPT ); Wed, 25 Jul 2007 18:18:05 -0400 Received: from smtp2.linux-foundation.org ([207.189.120.14]:60368 "EHLO smtp2.linux-foundation.org" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1757099AbXGYWSE (ORCPT ); Wed, 25 Jul 2007 18:18:04 -0400 Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2007 15:12:52 -0700 From: Andrew Morton To: Michael Kerrisk Cc: lkml , Linux Torvalds , Davide Libenzi , drepper@redhat.com, stable@kernel.org Subject: Re: Problems with timerfd() Message-Id: <20070725151252.8d2d5141.akpm@linux-foundation.org> In-Reply-To: <46A7940B.4070901@gmx.net> References: <46A44B7D.3030700@gmx.net> <20070722233826.20efa6e5.akpm@linux-foundation.org> <46A7940B.4070901@gmx.net> X-Mailer: Sylpheed version 2.2.7 (GTK+ 2.8.6; i686-pc-linux-gnu) 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 On Wed, 25 Jul 2007 20:18:51 +0200 Michael Kerrisk wrote: > Andrew, > > Andrew Morton wrote: > > On Mon, 23 Jul 2007 08:32:29 +0200 Michael Kerrisk wrote: > > > >> Andrew, > >> > >> The timerfd() syscall went into 2.6.22. While writing the man page for > >> this syscall I've found some notable limitations of the interface, and I am > >> wondering whether you and Linus would consider having this interface fixed > >> for 2.6.23. > >> > >> On the one hand, these fixes would be an ABI change, which is of course > >> bad. (However, as noted below, you have already accepted one of the ABI > >> changes that I suggested into -mm, after Davide submitted a patch.) > >> > >> On the other hand, the interface has not yet made its way into a glibc > >> release, and the change will not break applications. (The 2.6.22 version > >> of the interface would just be "broken".) > > > > I think if the need is sufficient we can do this: fix it in 2.6.23 and in > > 2.6.22.x. That means that there will be a few broken-on-new-glibc kernels > > out in the wild, but very few I suspect. > > So I'm still not quite clear. Can I take it from your statement above that > the proposed ABI changes would be admissible, as long as Davide is okay > with them? > yup, I'll send that diff into Linus and -stable and see what happens.