In <Pine.LNX.3.95.1000108191728.9974A-100000@chaos.analogic.com> Richard B. Johnson (root@chaos.analogic.com) wrote:
> On Fri, 7 Jan 2000, Alexander Viro wrote:
>> Folks, there are changes underway in block device interface and
>> some of them made it into 2.3.38.
> [SNIP...]
> Good grief Charley Brown! You, in a few key-strokes, just blew away
> major portions of the work done over the past few years by software
> engineers who ported their drivers to Linux.
"Major portions" ? Are you joking ???
> Linux will never be accepted as a 'professional' operating system if this
> continues.
Why you think kernel developers should think about this ? It's task for RedHat,
Caldera, SuSE management NOT for Linus, Cox, Viro or Arcangeli.
> It's enough of a problem putting one's job on-the-line convincing
> management to risk new product development to Linux. Once these
> products are in Production, and bugs are discovered in the OS,
> we must be able to get the latest version of the OS and have our
> drivers compile.
WHY ??? It's not possible with Windows, it's not possible with Solaris,
why it should be possible with Linux ?
> If this is not possible, you do not have an operating system that is
> anything other than an interesting experiment.
Ok. So we do not have any OS that is anything other than an interesting
experiment.
> For instance, there was a simple new change in the type of
> an object passed to poll and friends.
In 2.2 or in 2.3 ??
> This just cost me two weeks of unpaid work! Unpaid because I had to hide it.
> If anyone in Production Engineering had learned about this, the stuff would
> have been thrown out, the MicroCreeps would have settled in with "I told you
> so..", and at least three of us would have lost our jobs.
> Industry is at war. You can't do this stuff to the only weapons
> we have.
Why not ? Why Microsoft can do this, Sun can do this and Linus can not ???
What's the difference ?
> Once you claim to have a "Professional Operating System",
> its development must be handled in a professional way. If major
> kernel interface components continue to change, Linux is in
> a heap of trouble as are most all of those who are trying to
> incorporate it into new designs.
But if such components will be continue to change then Linux is in even
bigger heap of trouble since this will mean that you can not fix design
errors !
> The industrial use of Linux is not at the desktop. It involves
> writing drivers for obscure things like machine controllers
> (read telescope controllers), Digital signal processors (read
> medical imaging processors), and other stuff you can't buy at the
> computer store. It doesn't matter if you fix all of Donald Becker's
> drivers to interface with the new kernel internals. You have still
> broken most everything that counts.
Drivers MUST be changed with new kernel release (and thus via development
branch: development kernels are just snapshots of development process after
all). It was true from the start and it'll be true tomorrow. It's true for
most OSes available. It's ESPECIALLY true for Linux where drivers are linked
directly in kernel. If you expected something other then you made wrong choice
choosing Linux.
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