From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Ben Hutchings Subject: Re: [PATCH] ethtool.h: Add "structs are public" disclaimer comment Date: Sun, 14 Mar 2010 17:50:34 +0000 Message-ID: <1268589034.2664.68.camel@localhost> References: <20100314014335.GA17208@serverengines.com> <20100313.181145.211264593.davem@davemloft.net> <1268583478.30289.94.camel@Joe-Laptop.home> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="UTF-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Cc: David Miller , ajitk@serverengines.com, ajitkhaparde@gmail.com, jeff@garzik.org, netdev@vger.kernel.org To: Joe Perches Return-path: Received: from exchange.solarflare.com ([216.237.3.220]:9916 "EHLO exchange.solarflare.com" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1754728Ab0CNRuj (ORCPT ); Sun, 14 Mar 2010 13:50:39 -0400 In-Reply-To: <1268583478.30289.94.camel@Joe-Laptop.home> Sender: netdev-owner@vger.kernel.org List-ID: On Sun, 2010-03-14 at 09:17 -0700, Joe Perches wrote: > On Sat, 2010-03-13 at 18:11 -0800, David Miller wrote: > > For the millionth time, you cannot change these datastructures > > like this without breaking all existing userspace applications > > out there. > > Maybe this might help reduce the broken record repetitiveness. > > Signed-off-by: Joe Perches > --- > diff --git a/include/linux/ethtool.h b/include/linux/ethtool.h > index b33f316..9bd7583 100644 > --- a/include/linux/ethtool.h > +++ b/include/linux/ethtool.h > @@ -10,6 +10,15 @@ > * Portions Copyright (C) Sun Microsystems 2008 > */ > > +/* > + * Do not submit patches that change the public structs not guarded by > + * #ifdef __KERNEL__ in this file. > + * > + * In case the use of __u8, __u16, __u32 and other reserved types don't > + * mean much to you, these structs are used by user-space applications > + * and must not be changed. > + */ This comment is not quite correct: reserved fields may be replaced so long as the structure size and offsets of other fields stay the same. Ben. -- Ben Hutchings, Senior Software Engineer, Solarflare Communications Not speaking for my employer; that's the marketing department's job. They asked us to note that Solarflare product names are trademarked.