From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Date: Tue, 13 Dec 2005 09:06:42 +0000 From: Christoph Hellwig Subject: Re: [PATCH 1/19] MUTEX: Introduce simple mutex implementation Message-ID: <20051213090642.GD27857@infradead.org> References: <439E38A4.30204@rtr.ca> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <439E38A4.30204@rtr.ca> To: Mark Lord Cc: David Howells , torvalds@osdl.org, akpm@osdl.org, hch@infradead.org, arjan@infradead.org, matthew@wil.cx, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, linux-arch@vger.kernel.org List-ID: On Mon, Dec 12, 2005 at 09:57:40PM -0500, Mark Lord wrote: > This will BREAK a lot of out-of-tree stuff if merged. Well, bad luck for them. > The simplest way would be to NOT re-use the up()/down() symbols, > but rather to either keep them as-is (counting semaphores), > or delete them entirely (so that external code *knows* of the change). That I agree with actually. Keeping the semaphore interface as-is would simplify in-kernel transition a lot aswell and make it easier for people to get the API read. And the mutex symbols could get far more sensible names like mutex_lock, mutex_unlock and mutex_trylock..