Re: [RFC] Splitting kernel headers and deprecating __KERNEL__

David Woodhouse
2004-11-27T23:17:57Z

On Sat, 2004-11-27 at 23:53 +0100, Arnd Bergmann wrote:
> The problem with these (atomic.h, bitops.h, byteorder.h, div64.h,
> list.h, spinlock.h, unaligned.h and xor.h) is that they provide
> functionality that is needed by many user application but not
> provided by the compiler or libc.
>
> While I agree that it is an absolutely evil concept to include
> them from the kernel headers, we have to face that by not installing
> them, lots of this existing evil user code will be broken even
> more and someone has to pick up the pieces.

The existing evil user code is broken already. Any of the above can be
implemented in a such a way that it only works in the kernel anyway.

We don't need to preserve it any more than we need to preserve evil
broken code which defines __KERNEL__ before including certain headers.
We're supposed to be cleaning this crap up. If we want every evil broken
hack that's currently possible to _remain_ possible, it's never going to
work.

--
dwmw2