Re: [PATCH 04/10] batman-adv: export compatibility version via debugfs

[David Miller <davem@davemloft.net>]

From: Ben Hutchings <bhutchings@solarflare.com>
Date: Mon, 19 Nov 2012 18:52:30 +0000

> On Mon, 2012-11-19 at 09:24 +0100, Antonio Quartulli wrote:
>> Different versions of the batman-adv module may use the same compatibility
>> version, but this is not understandable at runtime (the only way is to parse the
>> kernel log and fetch the batman-adv advertisement message on loading). The user
>> may want to know whether two nodes using different versions can communicate or
>> not. For this purpose the module has to export this value through debugfs.
> [...]
> 
> I do hope that you're not planning to use unstable debugfs interfaces
> indefinitely.

I think this is a huge mess and I don't think I'm going to pull this
series for that reason.

Once we allow you to merge your protocol/facility/whatever into the
main kernel tree, you have to be mindful of compatability in a very
real way.

These kinds of changes show that this isn't actually happening.

So the only weapon I have against you doing more foolishly
incompatable changes is to simply stop taking your submissions until
things are corrected.