From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1030192AbWBYKNY (ORCPT ); Sat, 25 Feb 2006 05:13:24 -0500 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S1030196AbWBYKNY (ORCPT ); Sat, 25 Feb 2006 05:13:24 -0500 Received: from zeniv.linux.org.uk ([195.92.253.2]:32689 "EHLO ZenIV.linux.org.uk") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1030192AbWBYKNX (ORCPT ); Sat, 25 Feb 2006 05:13:23 -0500 Date: Sat, 25 Feb 2006 10:13:18 +0000 From: Al Viro To: Christoph Hellwig , Ulrich Drepper , akpm@osdl.org, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, torvalds@osdl.org Subject: Re: [PATCH] flags parameter for linkat Message-ID: <20060225101317.GI27946@ftp.linux.org.uk> References: <200602231410.k1NEAMk1021578@devserv.devel.redhat.com> <20060225091606.GA22749@infradead.org> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <20060225091606.GA22749@infradead.org> User-Agent: Mutt/1.4.1i Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org On Sat, Feb 25, 2006 at 09:16:07AM +0000, Christoph Hellwig wrote: > Please stop adding these crappy flags argument everywhere, they're also > creaping like a cancer through the other *at stuff. Just make linkat > do the righ thing per posix spec for link, and then you can implement > a posix link based on it in glibc if the user compiles with XOPEN_SOURCE > or whatever. It's a bloody bad idea, since XOPEN_SOURCE is nowhere near fine-grained enough and could be forced by any number of things. The _real_ issue with flags is the lack of filtering. I.e. we blindly pass userland argument there, exposing both internal flag values _and_ flags that really shouldn't be exposed that way at all.