Re: [PATCH] docs: ABI: make the KernelVersion field optional

[<dan.j.williams@intel.com>]

alison.schofield@ wrote:
> From: Alison Schofield <alison.schofield@intel.com>
> 
> The KernelVersion field has limited practical value. Git history
> provides more accurate tracking of when features were introduced
> and target kernel versions often change during development and
> merge.
> 
> Label it optional.
> 
> Signed-off-by: Alison Schofield <alison.schofield@intel.com>

I gave this feedback as a review comment and support this.

Acked-by: Dan Williams <dan.j.williams@intel.com>

However, this document is quite old and, for example, says about
"Users:":

    "This is very important for interfaces in the 'testing' stage,"

The Users: tag only appears in 49 out of the 564 testing/ files.

Moreover, the testing/ stable/ distinction has lost meaning over time.

So, yes, marking KernelVersion: as explicitly optional is maybe an
improvement, but there are wider issues here, and leaving well enough
alone is also a reasonable outcome in that light.

> ---
> 
> Plan B is to remove the field entirely. 

I do not want to motivate a slew of "cleanup" patches removing it from
other files, so "optional" makes sense.

I think What: and Description: are mandatory, everything else is
optional and maybe note that an ABI is "stable" the moment it is in a
released kernel and a real world use case starts depending on it.

The pain of removing or renaming the stable/ and testing/ directories is
probably not worth it given the potential to break links that people
have to these Documentation files.