Re: [Call For Wartectomy] CRLF conversion out of kernel

Khimenko Victor (khim@sch57.msk.ru)
Thu, 15 Jul 1999 02:14:15 +0400 (MSD)


In <7mim28$7k7@pell.pell.portland.or.us> david parsons (o.r.c@p.e.l.l.p.o.r.t.l.a.n.d.o.r.u.s) wrote:
> In article <linux.kernel.5l673njici.fsf@tequila.cs.yale.edu>,
> Stefan Monnier <monnier+lists/linux/kernel/news/@tequila.cs.yale.edu> wrote:
>>>>>>> "david" == david parsons <o.r.c@p.e.l.l.p.o.r.t.l.a.n.d.o.r.u.s> writes:
>>> Taking it out may kill backwards compatability.
>>
>>Noone cares.

> Noone _on the linux kernel mailing list_ cares, you mean.

> And guess what? That's not true; two people have already popped
> up and complained about it.

Yes, but noone gave STRONG reason to keep it up :-)

> Sure, you can do things the MS-Windows way and arbitrarily break
> compatability from one version of Linux to the next

No. It's not MS-Windows way. It's Linux way. In MS-Windows word you can not
afford such luxurity since usually you do not have sources and so can not fix
them.

> (certainly this would be nothing new -- software engineering died
> of a buzzword overdose early in the 1990s -- but it would be nice
> to be able to recommend Linux in terms more glowing than "well,
> it's Unix, I guess.")

May be but if this will need to keep up all ugly hacks and broken API for ages
then better "well, it's Unix, I guess" :-))

> So CR/LF is a horrible hack that should never have been done in
> the first place. Good, it's a better lesson to kernel developers
> that when you design a published interface you need to do it well
> or else it will haunt you forever.

Thanx god, not forever. It's not MS-Windows (where you STILL have support for
ugly obsoleted-more-then-10-years-ago FCB-based API !). It's Linux. It will be
marked as obsolete and then it will be deleted altogether. In our case it must
be marked as obsolete in 2.2.11 and removed in 2.4 ...

It's beauty of Linux to me: it's system where develepers are not afraid to
remove obsoleted or ugly API ... With discussion and proposed replacements,
of course :-)

-
To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in
the body of a message to majordomo@vger.rutgers.edu
Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/