Re: [PATCH 2/4] sysfs: Implement sysfs manged shadow directory support.

[ebiederm-aS9lmoZGLiVWk0Htik3J/w@public.gmane.org (Eric W. Biederman)]

Greg KH <gregkh-l3A5Bk7waGM@public.gmane.org> writes:

> On Mon, Jul 23, 2007 at 04:47:21AM +0900, Tejun Heo wrote:
>> Sorry but I don't think the current approach is the correct one.  It's
>> too painful and too much complexity is scattered all over the place.
>> I'm afraid this implementation is going to be a maintenance nightmare.
>
> In looking over this again, and due to the fact that there are no
> in-kernel users of this code, I'm going to drop the other patches in
> this series and only keep the first one that removes the current
> implementation.
>
> Eric, is that ok?  It gives you time to revisit these changes.

Greg a big part of the reason I don't have internal kernel users
is keeping up with changes of sysfs has meant I haven't had time
to clean up and submit the patches for the users.  With a little
luck I will have users by 2.6.24.  I am in the process of cleaning
up those patches right now.  So I can send the off to Dave Miller.

So please can we try and at least keep these sysfs patches in a
development tree so that people will see them.

Further while there are a few little nits I think mostly Tejun is 
mostly objecting to the fundamental complexity of the problem rather
then to things that can be fixed by a cleaner implementation.

If it didn't take me a week every time I had to update this code
after Tejun changes the locking rules in fs/sysfs/dir.c or if there
was someone I could delegate the work of maintaining this code to
I probably would not mind dropping the patches for a little bit.  As
it stands I am having horrible nightmares about how the internals
of sysfs will be completely different if you drop the last 3 patches
by the time I come back and I will need to spend several more weeks
just catching up.

Eric