[Ksummit-discuss] [MAINTAINER TOPIC] ABI feature gates?
Linus Torvalds
torvalds at linux-foundation.org
Fri Aug 11 06:39:41 UTC 2017
On Thu, Aug 10, 2017 at 11:21 PM, NeilBrown <neilb at suse.com> wrote:
>
> With this pattern, people can still trust an X.Y kernel,
I do *NOT* want people to trust an X.Y kernel.
Quite the opposite.
I want people to realize that the version doesn't matter, and that
they should feel safe in upgrading. The X and the Y don't matter, and
they *MUST*NOT*MATTER*.
If they do, the process is completely and utterly broken.
So what people should be able to trust is that they can always upgrade.
Not the shit that I see *ALL* the time, where you upgrade something,
and it breaks.
And no, the excuse "but the API was new in X.Y, so it could change in
X.Y+1" does *not* hold water.
It very much violates that basic principle of trust and makes people
go "I don't want to upgrade, because it might break something I do".
Linus
More information about the Ksummit-discuss
mailing list