On Wed, 15 Feb 2012 07:42:30 -0500 "J. Bruce Fields" <bfields@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > > > Perhaps safest would be to replace /proc/locks by another interface and > > > deprecate this one. > > > > If exporting the name in the current /proc/locks file is out of the > > question, then IMHO I don't think it would be worth adding a new > > interface just for such a small change. > > OK. > > If you want to just change this over, I guess the thing to do would be > to stick something in feature-removal-schedule.txt saying "we'll switch > this in 2 years" (or however long you think before there are > realistically no more lslk users left), then do it then. > > Switching to a new api would be better as we could warn users of the old > api then. Maybe it'd be worth it if there was some other change we'd > been wanting to make? Can't think of anything off the top of my head. > > We may be adding more lock types--will lslk and lslocks handle that > gracefully? Adding a whole new interface is pretty attractive. It lets us get it right this time. In particular, something which is extensible given certain simple rules. As we've learned, the current /proc/locks didn't get that right! We can eventually remove the old code - it may take longer than two years, but whatever. If we go this way, we should arrange for the kernel to emit a warning (printk_once) into the logs the first time someone accesses the old file. This will help to prompt people to migrate off the deprecated interface. After a while, we can add a config option to make the old interface go away. Distros will start to disable the feature. Later, we zap it altogether. -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-fsdevel" in the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
