Re: Coding style - a non-issue

Rusty Russell
2001-12-06T00:12:38Z

On Sat, 1 Dec 2001 00:14:54 -0500 (EST)
Alexander Viro <viro@math.psu.edu> wrote:

>
>
> On Fri, 30 Nov 2001, Mike Fedyk wrote:
>
> > This is Linux-Kernel. Each developer is on their own on how they pay the
> > their bills. The question is... Why not accept a *driver* that *works* but
> > the source doesn't look so good?
>
> Because this "works" may very well include exploitable buffer overruns in
> kernel mode. I had seen that - ioctl() assuming that nobody would pass

And: bad code spreads. Anyone who has done infrastructure change in the
kernel sees this: people copy (presumed) working code.

Hence I now lean towards "change EVERYTHING" rather than "wrap old source, add
new", and "fix even if not broken", eg. my "set_bit needs a long" patch which
also changed x86-specific code (where it doesn't matter).

Cheers,
Rusty.
--
Anyone who quotes me is an idiot. -- Rusty Russell.