Re: [PATCH v2 net-next 15/15] tipc: remove old ASCII netlink API

[David Miller <davem@davemloft.net>]

From: Jon Maloy <jon.maloy@ericsson.com>
Date: Mon, 6 Oct 2014 13:37:14 +0000

> I disagree.  We did of course consider this before we posted the patch.  
> There is absolutely no reason to believe there are binaries "out there" 
> using this API. It is intended for and used only by our own tool "tipc-config", 
> and the half-baked documentation that exists about it is not even
> correct. This is an TIPC-internal API/ABI, which has changed over the years,
> and keeps changing.  To our best judgement there is no risk in removing the
> old API.
> 
> However, we took great care to not break any scripts that might be using 
> tipc-config. Therefore, we made this wrapper that provides the old 
> tipc-config command API to existing users.

A user should be able to upgrade the kernel and keep using tipc-config
(or _whatever_) that's on their machine.

You cannot break old stuff like this, and just because I didn't notice
you slipping in incompatible changes in the past doesn't mean I'm going
to let you keep doing it.

Backwards compatability must be maintained for every single interface
exposed to the user, and this is non-negotiable, sorry.