On Fri, Dec 21, 2018 at 10:47:14AM -0500, Theodore Y. Ts'o wrote: > Linus --- we're going round and round, and I don't think this is > really a technical dispute at this point, but rather an aesthetics > one. Will you be willing to accept my pull request for a feature > which is being shippped on millions of Android phones, has been out > for review for months, and for which, if we *really* need to add > uselessly complicated interface later, we can do that? It's always > been the case for internal Kernel interfaces not to add code "just in > case" it's useful, but rather when a user turns up. I argue we should > be doing the same thing for user-space visible interfaces. To look at it another way, this is an aesthetic dispute in which all those who have offered opinions from outside Google -- myself, Dave Chinner & Christoph all really dislike this interface. I'd be happy to discuss alternative interfaces, particularly ones which allow for the current internal implementation, but I think this interface is really bad. In contrast to "we'll just fix it up later" (which usually applies to in-kernel interfaces), we have a policy of not breaking userspace, so accepting this interface means setting it in stone. We should get it right.
