Re: userspace breakage

Linus Torvalds
2005-12-29T22:56:33Z

On Thu, 29 Dec 2005, Dave Jones wrote:
>
> At some point in time it became defacto that certain things like udev, hotplug,
> alsa-lib, wireless-tools and a bunch of others have to have kept in lockstep
> with the kernel, and if it breaks, it's your fault for not upgrading
> your userspace.

Hmm.. Time for some re-indoctrination?

We really shouldn't allow that. I know who to blame for udev, who else
should I complain to?

> Just a few years ago, if someone suggested breaking a userspace
> app in a kernel upgrade, they'd be crucified on linux-kernel, now
> it's 'the norm').

That really isn't acceptable. Breaking user space - even things that are
"close" to the kernel like udev scripts and alsa-lib, really is NOT a good
idea.

We're much better off wasting a bit of time on backwards compatibility,
than wasting a lot of user time and irritation (and indirectly, developer
time) on linkages to packages outside the kernel.

If you cannot upgrade a kernel without ugrading some user package, that
should be considered a real bug and a regression.

There are real technical reasons for not allowing those kinds of version
linkages: it makes it MUCH harder to blame the right thing when things go
wrong.

Now, I'm not saying that we can always support everything that goes on in
user space forever, but dammit, we can try damn hard.

(Somehow I'm not surprised about alsa. I think the whole alsa release
process has always sucked. Dang).

Linus