Re: [PATCH] macros to detect existance of unlocked_ioctl and ioctl_compat

[Christoph Hellwig <hch@infradead.org>]

On Thu, Jan 06, 2005 at 05:35:59PM +0100, Petr Vandrovec wrote:
> When Greg made sysfs GPL only, I've asked whether it is possible to merge
> vmmon/vmnet in (and changing its license, of course).  Answer on LKML was 
> quite clear: no, you are not interested in having vmmon/vmnet in Linux 
> kernel as you do not believe that they are usable for anything else than VMware.  

While I think there could be users, these users would probably come only
after the code was GPLed, so this is kinda chicken & egg.

> So please tell me what I can do to satisfy you?  You do not want our modules
> in kernel tree, and you do not want to allow us to detect kernel interface
> easily.  Of course we can use autoconf-like scripts we are using for
> example to detect pml4/pgd vs. pgd/pud vs. pgd/pmd/pte vs. pmd/pte only,
> but each time you can detect feature by looking at flags and not by trying
> to build one source after another detection is simpler and more reliable.

I don't care at all for non-opensource users, or small opensource glue for
a big propritary user.

> BTW, vmmon will still require register_ioctl32_conversion as we are using
> (abusing) it to be able to issue 64bit ioctls from 32bit application.  I
> assume that there is no supported way how to issue 64bit ioctls from 32bit
> aplication anymore after you disallow system-wide translations to be registered
> by modules.

Well, bad luck.  You'll have to stop using undocumented hacks.