Re: incoming

[Rasmus Villemoes <linux@rasmusvillemoes.dk>]

On Thu, Sep 10 2015, Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org> wrote:

> The VERY FIRST conversion patch I looked at was buggy. That makes me
> angry. The whole *AND*ONLY* point of this whole thing was to get rid
> of bugs, and be a obviously safe interface, and then the first
> conversion patch proves it wrong.
>
> Let me show you:
>
>         if (isdigit(*str)) {
> -               io_tlb_nslabs = simple_strtoul(str, &str, 0);
> +               str += parse_integer(str, 0, &io_tlb_nslabs);
>
> and obviously nobody spent even a *second* asking themselves "what if
> parse_integer returns an error".

[This is going to sound awfully self-glorifying. Oh well.] I did point
that out in another instance (memparse), which I think then got somewhat
fixed in a later version. Since Alexey and I seemed to disagree on what
guiding principles to use when doing the conversions and a number of
other points, I didn't have the energy to go through the entire series,
and the discussion died out.

http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.linux.kernel/1942623/focus=1944193

> I liked the automatic type-based templating it does, but I *don't*
> like the breakage that seems to be inevitable in any large-scale
> conversion from a previously used historical interface.

My words exactly.

Rasmus