Re: [Pv-drivers] [PATCH 12/12] VMCI: Some header and config files.

[Greg KH <gregkh@linuxfoundation.org>]

On Fri, Nov 30, 2012 at 09:20:41AM -0800, Dmitry Torokhov wrote:
> On Friday, November 30, 2012 09:09:21 AM Greg KH wrote:
> > On Fri, Nov 30, 2012 at 08:47:46AM -0800, Andy King wrote:
> > > I didn't get the resend either, so it seems our corporate mail really is
> > > eating messages.  Lovely.
> > > 
> > > > > > +#define IOCTLCMD(_cmd) IOCTL_VMCI_ ## _cmd
> > > > > 
> > > > > I don't recall ever getting a valid answer for this (if you did, my
> > > > > appologies, can you repeat it).  What in the world are you talking
> > > > > about here?  Why is your driver somehow special from the thousands
> > > > > of other ones that use the in-kernel IO macros properly for an
> > > > > ioctl?
> > > 
> > > Because we're morons.  And unfortunately, we've shipped our product
> > > using those broken definitions: our VMX uses them to talk to the driver.
> > > So here's what we'd like to do.  We will send out a patch soon that
> > > fixes the other issues you mention and also adds IOCTL definitions the
> > > proper way using _IOBLAH().  But we'd also like to retain these broken
> > > definitions for a short period, commented as such, at least until we
> > > can get out a patch release to Workstation 9, at which point we can
> > > remove them.  Does that sound reasonable?
> > 
> > It has been my experience, that when people say "We will remove that api
> > sometime in the future", it never happens.  So why not just do it now?
> > 
> > Especially given that this code will be coming out in 3.9 at the
> > earliest, and that is 6 months away, so that should be plenty of time to
> > get this fixed up.
> 
> Our schedule for releasing hosted products is not necessarily aligned
> with mainline kernel releases.

And kernel developers don't really care about company schedules, nor
should they, you know this :)

thanks,

greg k-h