Re: Stop the Linux kernel madness

From: 4Front Technologies
Date: Tue Jun 22 2004 - 12:33:59 EST


Denis Vlasenko wrote:

On Tuesday 22 June 2004 10:54, Hannu Savolainen wrote:

In the long term frequent changes in kernel interfaces cause problems
because drivers that try to stay compatible with as many kernel versions
as possible will start looking like #ifdef spaghetti.


What's the point in staying "compatible with as many kernels versions
as possible"? IMHO it's enough to be able to build and work
with latest 2.6, latest 2.4 and maybe latest 2.2. Not _that_
much of #ifdefs.

(/me was looking into ntp code recently. *That* is #ifdef hell)
--
vda


Hi Denis,

You'd be surprised how many people are still running Redhat 7.3 or howmany people are still running some version of Linux 2.4.2x. Sometimes its not easy telling the customer to upgrade to the latest Linux kernel from www.kernel.org because they don't have the expertise to compile kernels - heck some distributions don't even install gcc/make unless you select "Development System" during installation. (FreeBSD is more sane in that regard that they install gcc/make with the base system).


best regards
Dev Mazumdar

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