Re: [PATCH 1/19] MUTEX: Introduce simple mutex implementation

Christoph Hellwig
2005-12-13T09:06:46Z

On Mon, Dec 12, 2005 at 09:57:40PM -0500, Mark Lord wrote:
> This will BREAK a lot of out-of-tree stuff if merged.

Well, bad luck for them.

> The simplest way would be to NOT re-use the up()/down() symbols,
> but rather to either keep them as-is (counting semaphores),
> or delete them entirely (so that external code *knows* of the change).

That I agree with actually. Keeping the semaphore interface as-is
would simplify in-kernel transition a lot aswell and make it easier for
people to get the API read. And the mutex symbols could get far more sensible
names like mutex_lock, mutex_unlock and mutex_trylock..