Re: [PATCH v12 11/12] open: openat2(2) syscall

Ingo Molnar
2019-09-10T06:35:50Z

* Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org> wrote:

> On Sat, Sep 7, 2019 at 10:42 AM Andy Lutomirski <luto@amacapital.net> wrote:
> >
> > Linus, you rejected resolveat() because you wanted a *nice* API
>
> No. I rejected resoveat() because it was a completely broken garbage
> API that couldn't do even basic stuff right (like O_CREAT).
>
> We have a ton of flag space in the new openat2() model, we might as
> well leave the old flags alone that people are (a) used to and (b) we
> have code to support _anyway_.
>
> Making up a new flag namespace is only going to cause us - and users -
> more work, and more confusion. For no actual advantage. It's not going
> to be "cleaner". It's just going to be worse.

I suspect there is a "add a clean new flags namespace" analogy to the
classic "add a clean new standard" XKCD:

https://xkcd.com/927/

Thanks,

Ingo