Re: [RFC][PATCH -mm] PM: add /sys/power documentation to Documentation/ABI

[Greg KH <greg@kroah.com>]

On Wed, Aug 30, 2006 at 03:32:42PM -0700, Andrew Morton wrote:
> 
> This ABI/ thing rather snuck under my radar (I saw it go past, but a lot of
> things go past).

It had a lot of review the first time around.  The second and third had
relatively little.

> It'll be good if it works, but it is going to take quite a lot of thought,
> effort and maintainer vigilance to be successful and to avoid becoming
> rotware.

I agree.

> I wonder how hard it would be to write a script which parses a diff, works
> out if it touches ABI things, complain if it doesn't alter
> Documentation/ABI/*?  Not very - it's just a matter of defining a suitable
> regexp.

That would be good to have.

> What _should_ be documented in there, anyway?
> 
> - syscalls, obviously.
> 
> - /proc?  If so, everything, or are there exceptions?
> 
> - /sys?  If so, everything, or are there exceptions?
> 
> - ioctl numbers and payloads?
> 
> - netlink messages?
> 
> - ethtool thingies?  netdev interface names?  /proc/iomem identifiers? 
>   module names?  kernel-thread comm[] contents?  The ABI is pretty fat.
> 
> scary.

Yes, our ABI is scary.  And yes, all of the above is needed to be
documented if we want to have a handle on this thing.

It is probably something that we can throw at the janitors list for the
existing stuff to get some help.

thanks,

greg k-h