Re: [PATCH] virtio_balloon: coding style fixes

[Michael Kerrisk (man-pages)]

On 01/15/2015 02:44 PM, Michael S. Tsirkin wrote:
> On Thu, Jan 15, 2015 at 02:06:42PM +0100, Michal Hocko wrote:
>> On Thu 15-01-15 13:39:06, Michael S. Tsirkin wrote:
>>> Most of our code has
>>> struct foo {
>>> }
>>>
>>> Fix two instances where balloon is inconsistent.
>>
>> I hate to complain but is it really necessary to post such patches to
>> linux-api?
> 
> Well it's human to err, so it seems wise to copy parties
> interested in the ABI/API whenever we are changing files under include/uapi.
> Whitespace changes should mostly be safe, but it's not unknown
> e.g. to include unrelated changes in the same commit by mistake.
> 
>> I thought the list was primarily for API related discussions.
> 
> Basically this line in MAINTAINERS
> 
> ABI/API
> L:      linux-api@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> F:      Documentation/ABI/
> F:      include/linux/syscalls.h
> F:      include/uapi/
> F:      kernel/sys_ni.c
> 
> normally means "send all patches affecting files under include/uapi/ to
> this list", does it not?
> 
> Wasn't this the intent?
> 
>> This is not the only mail sent here which doesn't fall into that
>> category IMO. It is far from low volume list for quite some time.
>>
>> Please let's get back low volume and API only discussion!
> 
> Maybe send patch dropping include/uapi/ from there,
> should help drive the volumes down?

Well, regardless of what it technically means, there's always going
to be scope for ambiguity, and that's where we differ from computers:
we can ask ourselves the question: will other human beings interested 
in the API/ABI care about this patch?

Thanks,

Michael (also saddened about increasing noise on linux-api)

-- 
Michael Kerrisk
Linux man-pages maintainer; http://www.kernel.org/doc/man-pages/
Linux/UNIX System Programming Training: http://man7.org/training/
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