From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Douglas Gilbert Subject: Re: [PATCH] include/scsi/scsi.h replace u8 in 2.5.69 Date: Wed, 14 May 2003 23:10:27 +1000 Sender: linux-scsi-owner@vger.kernel.org Message-ID: <3EC24043.6070109@torque.net> References: <3EC1E4AF.6040404@torque.net> <20030514090218.A7371@infradead.org> Reply-To: dougg@torque.net Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Return-path: Received: from bunyip.cc.uq.edu.au ([130.102.2.1]:27147 "EHLO bunyip.cc.uq.edu.au") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S262161AbTENM5K (ORCPT ); Wed, 14 May 2003 08:57:10 -0400 In-Reply-To: <20030514090218.A7371@infradead.org> List-Id: linux-scsi@vger.kernel.org To: Christoph Hellwig Cc: linux-scsi@vger.kernel.org Christoph Hellwig wrote: > On Wed, May 14, 2003 at 04:39:43PM +1000, Douglas Gilbert wrote: > >>Here is a simple patch to replace the single occurrence >>of "u8" with "u_char" in include/scsi/scsi.h . > > > That's wrong. No userland should include kernwel headers. > (and u_char is a non-standard type, too). Christoph, That's naive. In some case glibc's headers and libraries (e.g. mknod) are an impediment to development. If I add one define to ~linux/include/scsi/sg.h just how long do you think it takes for it to appear in /usr/include/scsi/sg.h? It can take over a year in my experience. Put another way, the sg.h header that applications use should match the sg driver in the kernel not the glibc version. The glibc maintainers add nothing to the interface (apart from inertia and some bugs once in a while). Applications that include sg.h typically include scsi.h as well. Only when I change sg.h does this problem arise. It is one thing to state a policy (e.g. "no user program should include kernel headers") it is another thing to gratuitously break those few programs that have good reason not to follow that policy. Doug Gilbert