From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Received: from pigeon.gentoo.org ([208.92.234.80] helo=lists.gentoo.org) by finch.gentoo.org with esmtp (Exim 4.60) (envelope-from ) id 1R9JY1-0007uz-0z for garchives@archives.gentoo.org; Thu, 29 Sep 2011 16:33:21 +0000 Received: from pigeon.gentoo.org (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by pigeon.gentoo.org (Postfix) with SMTP id 5F1E121C336; Thu, 29 Sep 2011 16:33:02 +0000 (UTC) Received: from mail-bw0-f53.google.com (mail-bw0-f53.google.com [209.85.214.53]) by pigeon.gentoo.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 2AFA721C323 for ; Thu, 29 Sep 2011 16:30:15 +0000 (UTC) Received: by bkbzt12 with SMTP id zt12so1100104bkb.40 for ; Thu, 29 Sep 2011 09:30:15 -0700 (PDT) DKIM-Signature: v=1; a=rsa-sha256; c=relaxed/relaxed; d=gmail.com; s=gamma; h=mime-version:in-reply-to:references:date:message-id:subject:from:to :content-type; bh=hPPu+pnilSbnP4ZAQLEJ4J520UdncO9fcdO1IcSqQqE=; b=h/NcrI5ezBL0FPC4g+0x5LygcrhH1UCNHFU1Es1p15w1ziHhymhf/ZKgPEDbURt3JQ x/oJJCaMd/YnhBGls1eGndWSfmT1H+85pClF5Y8w3QX0KlS3fjZnPHqdBOQNZJo92D2C U3Wbg78tppJy1iNR7LneTSvAO5WuO6RPqV43o= Precedence: bulk List-Post: List-Help: List-Unsubscribe: List-Subscribe: List-Id: Gentoo Linux mail X-BeenThere: gentoo-user@lists.gentoo.org Reply-to: gentoo-user@lists.gentoo.org MIME-Version: 1.0 Received: by 10.204.154.139 with SMTP id o11mr1733811bkw.181.1317313815197; Thu, 29 Sep 2011 09:30:15 -0700 (PDT) Received: by 10.204.177.199 with HTTP; Thu, 29 Sep 2011 09:30:14 -0700 (PDT) In-Reply-To: <5198341.CcQDGSnoy4@localhost> References: <4E80D466.7010804@coolmail.se> <1545956.0FMtZHhPAZ@localhost> <5198341.CcQDGSnoy4@localhost> Date: Thu, 29 Sep 2011 12:30:14 -0400 Message-ID: Subject: Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Slightly OT but interesting nonetheless... From: Michael Mol To: gentoo-user@lists.gentoo.org Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8 X-Archives-Salt: X-Archives-Hash: 0c781a22019403e0137343f0c91a9eab On Thu, Sep 29, 2011 at 12:19 PM, Volker Armin Hemmann wrote: > Am Mittwoch 28 September 2011, 17:15:34 schrieb Grant Edwards: > >> >> Regardless, my point was that Linus's statement that it's unacceptable >> to break things seemed rather disingenuous given the API churn that >> Linux has compared with the BSD kernels. > > Linux has zero userland visible API 'churn'. > > You can't have less than zero. Uh, that can't be right. Largely, libc masks things. Several kernel options explicitly state in their description that they require new-enough versions of this or that userland tool to function properly. Randomizing module base addresses is one of those, IIRC. Some things related to sysfs. sysfs itself. I think some network filesystems. modutils. If there's no API churn, it should be pretty trivial to run a current userland on top of, e.g. 2.6.0-pre1, or even 2.6.0. I also STR 2.6.9 being a common pin point where a bunch of userland tools required that-or-newer. And that's ignoring dropping things like A.OUT support. I'm not arguing whether or not it's reasonable (it almost certainly is), but there certainly is churn. -- :wq