Re: 2.4.0 + iproute2

[Andi Kleen <ak@suse.de>]

On Sun, Jan 14, 2001 at 03:36:55AM -0800, David S. Miller wrote:
> 
> Andi Kleen writes:
>  > How would you pass the extended errors? As strings or as to be
>  > defined new numbers? I would prefer strings, because the number
>  > namespace could turn out to be as nasty to maintain as the current
>  > sysctl one.
> 
> Textual error messages for system calls never belong in the kernel.
> Put it in glibc or wherever.

This just means that a table needs to be kept in sync between glibc and
netlink, and if someone e.g. gets a new CBQ module he would need to update
glibc. It's also bad for maintainers, because patches for tables of number 
tend to always reject ;) 

Textual error messages are e.g. used by plan9 and would be somewhat similar
to /proc. It would probably waste a few bytes in the kernel, but that's not
too bad, given the work it saves. e.g. rusty's code usually has a debug option 
that you can set and where each EINVAL outputs a error message; i always found 
that very useful and sometimes hacked that into other subsystems in my 
private tree.

-Andi
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