Re: [patch 00/2] improve .text size on gcc 4.0 and newer compilers

Linus Torvalds
2005-12-29T21:26:16Z

On Thu, 29 Dec 2005, Linus Torvalds wrote:
>
> At least _I_ take breakage reports seriously. If there are maintainers
> that don't, complain to them. I'll back you up. Breaking user space simply
> isn't acceptable without years of preparation and warning.

Btw, sometimes we knowingly change semantics that we believe that nobody
would ever be able to care about. Then we literally _depend_ on people
complaining about breakage in case we were wrong, and if you guys don't,
and just curse, and upgrade programs, we actually miss out on real
information.

And yes, occasionally we don't have much choice, and things break. It
should be extremely rare, though. Much more commonly it would be a bug or
an unintentional change that somebody didn't even realized changed
semantics subtly.

Linus