On Thu, 2008-08-21 at 15:02 +1200, Charles Manning wrote: > > In-tree is no silver bullet. > > When people modify internal APIs they will likely fix anything that breaks > compilation. However many things are more subtle than that and it is very > easy to end up with a driver or other code that compiles but does not work > properly. > > Luckily APIs for drivers (the most common stuff that people work on) don't > change that much, and the interfaces are reasonably clear. If you want some > hell then try working on file systems :-). File systems show an excellent example of why you're wrong, in fact. The API for file systems changes quite a lot, and the people who make those changes do tend to fix up all the in-tree file systems simultaneously, -- and since they're doing it with a full understanding of the implications of the change they're making, they usually manage to get the change _right_. I find it's more common to introduce subtle errors when the person modifying the core API _hasn't_ also modified the driver/fs code which uses that API. Which is what happens when you have out-of-tree code. I'd rather remove my gonads with a rusty spoon than maintain an out-of-tree file system. -- dwmw2 -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-embedded" in the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
