Re: [RFC] Splitting kernel headers and deprecating __KERNEL__

Jeff Garzik
2004-11-29T04:36:56Z

Linus Torvalds wrote:
> In short: having the kernel use the same names as user space is ACTIVELY
> BAD, exactly because those names have standards-defined visibility, which
> means that the kernel _cannot_ use them in all places anyway. So don't
> even _try_.
>
> On the bigger question of what to do with kernel headers in general, let's
> just make one thing clear: the kernel headers are for the kernel, and big
> and painful re-organizations that don't help _existing_ user space are not
> going to happen.
>
> In particular, any re-organization that breaks _existing_ uses is totally
> pointless. If you break existing uses, you might as well _not_ re-
> organize, since if you consider kernel headers to be purely kernel-
> internal (like they should be, but hey, reality trumps any wishes we might
> have), then the current organization is perfectly fine.

I don't think any drastic reorganization is even necessary.

Mariusz Mazur <mmazur@kernel.pl> updates
http://ep09.pld-linux.org/~mmazur/linux-libc-headers/ for each 2.6.x
kernel release. linux-libc-headers are the kernel headers, with all the
kernel-specific stuff stripped out. i.e. userland ABI only. Not sure
how many distros have started picking that up yet... I think Arjan said
Fedora Core had, or would.

If people want to go beyond that, IMHO it would be simple and easy to
start putting new kernel headers in include/kernel (or somesuch). That
way there are no massive reorganizations; kernel-specific stuff gets
slowly migrated to a kernel-specific area.

Jeff