From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S934742AbXGYSUm (ORCPT ); Wed, 25 Jul 2007 14:20:42 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S1765687AbXGYSUb (ORCPT ); Wed, 25 Jul 2007 14:20:31 -0400 Received: from mail.gmx.net ([213.165.64.20]:54433 "HELO mail.gmx.net" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with SMTP id S1765785AbXGYSUa (ORCPT ); Wed, 25 Jul 2007 14:20:30 -0400 X-Authenticated: #24879014 X-Provags-ID: V01U2FsdGVkX1+9WE4lhqu9pCLz4112FMI6xsRZ7K1LJPPso5LEhS sTmbOFqQXy7je3 Message-ID: <46A7940B.4070901@gmx.net> Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2007 20:18:51 +0200 From: Michael Kerrisk User-Agent: Thunderbird 1.5.0.8 (X11/20060911) MIME-Version: 1.0 To: Andrew Morton CC: lkml , Linux Torvalds , Davide Libenzi , drepper@redhat.com, stable@kernel.org Subject: Re: Problems with timerfd() References: <46A44B7D.3030700@gmx.net> <20070722233826.20efa6e5.akpm@linux-foundation.org> In-Reply-To: <20070722233826.20efa6e5.akpm@linux-foundation.org> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Y-GMX-Trusted: 0 Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Andrew, Andrew Morton wrote: > On Mon, 23 Jul 2007 08:32:29 +0200 Michael Kerrisk wrote: > >> Andrew, >> >> The timerfd() syscall went into 2.6.22. While writing the man page for >> this syscall I've found some notable limitations of the interface, and I am >> wondering whether you and Linus would consider having this interface fixed >> for 2.6.23. >> >> On the one hand, these fixes would be an ABI change, which is of course >> bad. (However, as noted below, you have already accepted one of the ABI >> changes that I suggested into -mm, after Davide submitted a patch.) >> >> On the other hand, the interface has not yet made its way into a glibc >> release, and the change will not break applications. (The 2.6.22 version >> of the interface would just be "broken".) > > I think if the need is sufficient we can do this: fix it in 2.6.23 and in > 2.6.22.x. That means that there will be a few broken-on-new-glibc kernels > out in the wild, but very few I suspect. So I'm still not quite clear. Can I take it from your statement above that the proposed ABI changes would be admissible, as long as Davide is okay with them? Cheers, Michael -- Michael Kerrisk maintainer of Linux man pages Sections 2, 3, 4, 5, and 7 Want to help with man page maintenance? Grab the latest tarball at http://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/docs/manpages/ read the HOWTOHELP file and grep the source files for 'FIXME'.