From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Jeff Garzik Subject: Re: [PATCH] ethtool.h: Add "structs are public" disclaimer comment Date: Sun, 14 Mar 2010 14:38:19 -0400 Message-ID: <4B9D2D1B.2080004@garzik.org> References: <20100314014335.GA17208@serverengines.com> <20100313.181145.211264593.davem@davemloft.net> <1268583478.30289.94.camel@Joe-Laptop.home> <1268589034.2664.68.camel@localhost> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Cc: Joe Perches , David Miller , ajitk@serverengines.com, ajitkhaparde@gmail.com, netdev@vger.kernel.org To: Ben Hutchings Return-path: Received: from mail-gy0-f174.google.com ([209.85.160.174]:59467 "EHLO mail-gy0-f174.google.com" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1759569Ab0CNSiY (ORCPT ); Sun, 14 Mar 2010 14:38:24 -0400 Received: by gyg8 with SMTP id 8so1069638gyg.19 for ; Sun, 14 Mar 2010 11:38:22 -0700 (PDT) In-Reply-To: <1268589034.2664.68.camel@localhost> Sender: netdev-owner@vger.kernel.org List-ID: On 03/14/2010 01:50 PM, Ben Hutchings wrote: > 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. I don't think we need this in every ABI-related header, though, do we? Jeff