Re: [PATCH] man/man2/move_mount.2: document EINVAL on multiple instances

["G. Branden Robinson" <g.branden.robinson@gmail.com>]

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Hi Alex,

At 2025-10-12T16:57:22+0200, Alejandro Colomar wrote:
> On Sun, Oct 12, 2025 at 03:25:37PM +0100, Luca Boccassi wrote:
> > On Sun, 12 Oct 2025 at 13:58, Askar Safin <safinaskar@gmail.com> wrote:
> > > So everything is working as intended, and no changes to manual
> > > pages are needed.
> > 
> > I don't think so. This was in a mount namespace, so it was not
> > shared, it was a new image, so not shared either, and '/' was not
> > involved at all. It's probably because you tried with a tmpfs
> > instead of an actual image.
> > 
> > But it really doesn't matter, I just wanted to save some time for
> > other people by documenting this, but it's really not worth having a
> > discussion over it, feel free to just disregard it. Thanks.
> 
> I appreciate you wanting to save time for other people by documenting
> it.  But we should also make sure we understand it fully before
> documenting it.  I'd like us to continue this discussion, to be able
> to understand it and thus document it.  I appreciate Aleksa and
> Askar's efforts in understanding this, and the discussion too, which
> helps me understand it too.  I can't blindly take patches without
> review, and this discussion helps a lot.

I have some unsolicited project management advice to offer.

I think you should say "won't" rather than "can't" in your final
sentence.  You are defending a point of policy--rightly so, in my view.
If someone wants to argue your preference on the subject, policy is the
correct ground upon which to engage.

The practice of distinguishing mechanism from policy is a valuable skill
in domains outside of software design where we most often speak of them.

It's even more important in the instant context to articulate matters of
policy when a contributor indulges a passive-aggressive outburst like
Luca's, above.  Confusion of mechanism with policy is the lever by which
that sort of emotionalism operates; obviously we _could_ just do
whatever a contributor wants without discussion and without
interrogating the wisdom of doing so.

Regards,
Branden

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