> I don't think I've seen this suggestion before...
>
> How about adding a version number as the first entry in every 'file' in the
> /proc filesystem. Every time that the format of one of the files
> is changed, the version will get incremented.
>
> This would certainly aid people in debugging programs that are based
> on the /proc filesystem. Just imagine, no more "ps doesn't work anymore,
> what's wrong??". The application could use the version number
> and say "The /proc filesystem format has chaned for /proc/xxx. This
> program may not function properly anymore. Please upgrade it!"
In fact adding version numbers and checking them would make the whole
situation worse; programs would have to complain though they still receive
appropriate information from /proc. Oh, we could fix that by adding a
setver command ;-)
No version numbers are required for the proc filesystem when used properly;
the entries in /proc are made up in a way that makes it easy to check for the
presence of required information. ps broke because it had a poorly written
parser for information from proc.
Ralf