Re: [patch 4/4] Markers Support for Proprierary Modules

Ingo Molnar
2008-03-20T22:16:26Z

* Jon Masters <jcm@redhat.com> wrote:

> > > There seems to be good arguments for markers to support
> > > proprierary modules. So I am throwing this one-liner in and let's
> > > see how people react. [...]
> >
> > ugh, this is unbelievably stupid move technically - so a very strong
> > NACK. Allowing marker use in unfixable modules (today it's placing
> > markers into unfixable modules, tomorrow it's marker use by such
> > modules) has only one clear and predictable effect: it turns marker
> > calls into essential ABIs because when faced with any breakage in an
> > unfixable module that makes use of a marker in some kernel subsystem
> > then all the pressure is on those who _can_ fix their code - meaning
> > the kernel subsystem maintainers that use markers.
>
> Mathieu's previous comment was that this was to help improve the
> quality of such drivers. Out of interest, why do you dislike markers
> so much?

i'm not particularly interested in improving the quality of such
drivers. I'm interested in improving the quality of _open_ code. And not
making too many promises in advance about how our kernel internals will
look like in the future is a fundamental aspect of that.

So i have no problems with export trivial or cast-into-stone aspects of
the kernel - doing that simply has no negative effects on open code. But
the details of markers are far from settled and far from trivial.

Ingo