Re: [PATCH] Add getdents32t syscall

[Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>]

On Thu, 26 Feb 2004, Ulrich Drepper wrote:
> 
> > In other words, why doesn't glibc ever just make a new major number and
> > make its "struct dirent" be the 64-bit version?
> 
> You can't be serious.  Can you even imagine the pain this would cause?

Do you know how much pain it causes when you make changes and you do _not_ 
change the major number?

At some point you need to clean up. 

This issue has been with us for years and years. I don't understand why
you'd want to add a totally new system call now. Instead, I'd suggest you 
just put this on the long list of things to fix for when a new major 
number is to be used.

And yes, you should use a new major number at some point. It is
_senseless_ to never update the majors. Just make a clean break, go
through every little nagging ugly thing (and there are a _lot_ of them 
that have accumulated over the years), and make ready for "libc-3.0".

No, I'm not suggesting you do it for this one thing, obviously. But 
there's bound to be _thousands_ of these stupid things where glibc has 
compatibility crap that makes no sense.

		Linus