Re: [PATCH] libosd: Remove ignored __weak attribute

[Nick Desaulniers]

On Fri, Oct 26, 2018 at 1:42 PM Linus Torvalds
<torvalds@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> On Fri, Oct 26, 2018 at 1:06 PM Nick Desaulniers
> <ndesaulniers@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> >
> > Is removing a filesystem considered a userspace breakage?
>
> Yes - if a user notices.
>
> The key word is *USER*.
>
> Note that it's not "user space". It's not about _programs_ noticing,
> it's literally about users and their workflows.
>
> If some change breaks a real user workflow, it needs to be reverted.
>
> So this is not about ABI or anything like that. We've had cases where
> the ABI stayed the same, but the order of device probing changed, and
> that broke peoples setups (because now /dev/sdb and /dev/sda switched
> places), and we had to revert.
>
> It's literally about "if a user upgrades a kernel, and something no
> longer works, it's a regression".
>
> In general, a good idea is "if you have to wonder about it, just don't
> do it".  Because it turns out that users are odd, and often do odd
> things much after you'd have thought they'd have long since switched
> to more modern hardware or filesystems.
>
>                       Linus

Makes sense and is a consistent stance.  Thanks for clarifying.  Will
pursue the smaller fix in the other subthread.
https://lkml.org/lkml/2018/10/27/55

-- 
Thanks,
~Nick Desaulniers