Re: kernel header separation

[Jeff Garzik <jgarzik@pobox.com>]

On Mon, Sep 08, 2003 at 03:12:10PM +0100, Alan Cox wrote:
> On Llu, 2003-09-08 at 14:38, David Woodhouse wrote:
> > > __u8 has a very precise meaning defined by Linux.  If you're including
> > > a Linux header. that's what you need to worry about.
> > 
> > It's a kernel-private type. If we're aiming for a clean set of headers,
> > then ideally we should avoid gratuitously defining our own types when
> > standards already exist.
> 
> __u8 is intended to be used by non kernel stuff for headers. Thats why
> "__u8" not "u8" - so it doesnt pollute the sacred posix name space and
> have us lynched by glibc people

Well, strictly speaking, __u8 is an internal gcc not kernel type.

Now that C99 has defined size-based types, I would prefer that we start
using those...  They are a bit more verbose than "u8" but I think look
better, and more important, are more portable in the long term than __u8.

Whenever I see "__u8", I think "non-standard, gcc-specific dependency"

	Jeff