sysctl

Albert Cahalan
2006-10-18T18:23:40Z

In the wireless-extensions thread, Linus writes:

> In general, the answer to "when can we break user space" is very simple.
>
> Never.
>
> It's just not acceptable. We maintain old interfaces for years (and in
> some cases, well over a decade by now), simply because the pain from not
> doing so is horrendous, and it makes debugging impossible. You get into
> situations where users need to upgrade to tools that don't work with older
> kernels, and can thus not downgrade, etc etc.

I guess the sysctl question has been answered then,
especially since random normal apps use sysctl.

If it needs a maintainer, put me down.

I think the main problem was fixed long ago,
by assigning fixed numbers to the enum values.
Practically no other kernel code uses an enum
for an ABI, and I think we can see why.