Re: Why not make Linux source modular?
David A Willmore (willmore@cig.mot.com)
Tue, 27 Feb 1996 13:05:59 -0600
On Feb 25, 11:22am, Linus Torvalds wrote:
> One _major_ advantage as having it all in one lump is that when I change
> some interface, I can then fix all the pieces that use that interface,
> rather than just tell people who maintain all the pieces to fix it.
> Believe me, it makes things a _lot_ easier.
>
> (Of course, that kind of changes do not happen often, but when they do
> it's traumatic enough even without any added synchronization problems).
To further Linus's comments, it would be nice if code that is seperate from
ther kernel, but which interfaces with the kernel would keep its version
numbering scheme parallel with the kernel. The module code does this, but
several other things do not. There is the problem of indicating the
independant version status of the code. For example, I write a new block
driver which works with 1.3.69. What do I call it? 1.3.69 would imply that it
was fairly stable. How about 0.1.3.59 or 0.1-1.3.59 or some such?
Cheers,
David