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

Linus Torvalds
2005-12-29T20:50:00Z

On Thu, 29 Dec 2005, Dave Jones wrote:
>
> Seriously, we break things _every_ release. Sometimes in tiny
> 'doesn't really matter' ways, sometimes in "fuck, my system no
> longer works" ways, but the days where we I didn't have to tell
> our userspace packagers to rev a half dozen or so packages up to the
> latest upstream revisions when I've pushed a rebased kernel are
> a distant memory.

Umm.. Complain more. I upgrade kernels a lot more often than I upgrade
distros, and things don't break. They're not allowed to break, because I
refuse to upgrade my user programs just because I do kernel development.
But I'd only notice a small part of user space, so if people don't
complain, they break not because we don't care, but because we didn't even
know.

So if you have a user program that breaks, _complain_. It's really not
supposed to happen outside of perhaps kernel module loaders etc things
that get really really chummy with kernel internals (and even that was
fixed: the modern way of loading modules isn't that chummy any more, so
hopefully we'll not need to break even module loaders again).

If we change some /proc file thing, breakage is often totally
unintentional, and complaining is the right thing - people might not even
have realized it broke.

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.

Linus