On Thursday, October 27, 2016 4:12:54 PM CEST Dmitry Torokhov wrote: > On Thu, Oct 27, 2016 at 03:25:43PM -0700, Deepa Dinamani wrote: > > > If users are forced to update to adapt to the new event format, should > > > we consider more radical changes? For example, does it make sense to > > > send timestamp on every event? Maybe we should only send it once per > > > event packet (between EV_SYN/SYN_REPORT)? What granularity do we need? > > > Is there anything else in current protocol that we'd like to change? > > > > I did see the thread with Pingbo's patches where you had a similar comment. > > > > I see my series as decoupling the kernel input event format from the > > userspace format. > > The formats also are really the same still. > > Could this be considered the first step towards changing the protocol? > > I really do not see the point. I think we agree that the current > protocol is not working past 2038 and it does not seem we can fix it > transparently for the user. So we need to define new protocol and let > kernel and clients negotiate which one is used. This work is not primarily about fixing the protocol to work beyond 2038 (although as a side-effect it will work until 2106). The main intention here is to not break existing applications when they get recompiled against a C library that defines time_t as 64-bit. > I am not concerned about in-kernel representation much as it does not > get stored anywhere so we can adjust it as needed without too much > effort. > > > The protocol changes might need new interfaces to be defined between libraries. > > And, could end up being a substantial change. > > Would a step by step approach make sense? > > It would depend largely on the scope. I think we should do those two things completely independently. We need to do something now to preserve the current interfaces for the glibc changes that are coming soon [1], and Deepa's patches do that (though I now realize the changelog doesn't mention the requirement). An overhaul of the input_event handling with a new modern but incompatible format may or may not be a good idea, but this should be decided independently. Arnd [1] https://sourceware.org/glibc/wiki/Y2038ProofnessDesign -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-input" in the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
