Re: [RFC] Splitting kernel headers and deprecating __KERNEL__

David Woodhouse
2004-11-30T22:36:01Z

On Tue, 2004-11-30 at 14:25 -0800, Linus Torvalds wrote:
>
> On Tue, 30 Nov 2004, Alexandre Oliva wrote:
>
> > > (a) it can't break anything (ie the old location still includes the new
> > > one, exactly the same way)
> >
> > You mean it can't break anything in a kernel build, or it can't break
> > anything except for userland apps that abused kernel headers and used
> > to get away with that?
>
> It can't break userland either.

That depends on your definition of 'break'. It should prevent abuse.

To pick a specific example, since you like them: where userland programs
are including atomic.h, and hence writing programs which don't compile
on some architectures, and which compile on others but silently give
non-atomic results, it's perfectly acceptable and indeed advisable to
prevent compilation across the board.

Some people might call that breakage; I don't.

--
dwmw2