From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: from terminus.zytor.com ([198.137.202.10]:58046 "EHLO terminus.zytor.com" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1758952AbZLKTT5 (ORCPT ); Fri, 11 Dec 2009 14:19:57 -0500 Message-ID: <4B2299E3.8020903@zytor.com> Date: Fri, 11 Dec 2009 11:13:39 -0800 From: "H. Peter Anvin" MIME-Version: 1.0 Subject: Re: [PATCH 1/3] Replace kernel/timeconst.pl with kernel/timeconst.sh References: <200912080317.08254.rob@landley.net> <200912091740.43147.rob@landley.net> <4B20FD2C.1010804@suse.cz> <200912101717.00049.rob@landley.net> <4B2265D2.6000400@suse.cz> In-Reply-To: <4B2265D2.6000400@suse.cz> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: linux-kbuild-owner@vger.kernel.org List-ID: To: Michal Marek Cc: Rob Landley , linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, linux-kbuild@vger.kernel.org On 12/11/2009 07:31 AM, Michal Marek wrote: > > OK, that's valid point, indeed. Peter, would you ack Rob's patch with > the oneline fix added (http://lkml.org/lkml/2009/12/8/94 plus > http://lkml.org/lkml/2009/12/9/435)? > I strongly dislike his patch, as he open-codes specific multiprecision arithmetic. This makes it hard for other people to maintain, and makes it prone to errors -- as evidenced by the fact that it didn't even replicate the known-good results. I have made my position clear on this and other patches several times before: I consider it a fool's errand, and a result of a completely pointless crusade to make a particular science fair-type project a wee bit easier. We have already seen real damage caused by it, since people have used awk instead, and have gotten bitten by incompatibilities between awk implementations. As such, no, I will not ack this patch, and will consider myself released of any obligation to maintain the code if this goes in anyway. I would consider acking a C program which does proper multiprecision arithmetic, but I'm also not going to spend my time on it. -hpa -- H. Peter Anvin, Intel Open Source Technology Center I work for Intel. I don't speak on their behalf.