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Date: Mon, 3 Mar 2008 11:20:55 +0100
From: "Michael Kerrisk" <mtk.manpages@googlemail.com>
To: "Ingo Molnar" <mingo@elte.hu>
Subject: Re: SCHED_IDLE documentation
Cc: "Arnd Bergmann" <arnd@arndb.de>, "Christoph Hellwig" <hch@lst.de>,
       cbe-oss-dev@ozlabs.org, "Jeremy Kerr" <jk@ozlabs.org>,
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       "Andrew Morton" <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
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On Mon, Mar 3, 2008 at 11:17 AM, Ingo Molnar <mingo@elte.hu> wrote:
>
>  * Michael Kerrisk <mtk.manpages@googlemail.com> wrote:
>
>
> > >  commit 0e6aca43e08a62a48d6770e9a159dbec167bf4c6
>  > >  Author: Ingo Molnar <mingo@elte.hu>
>  > >  Date:   Mon Jul 9 18:51:57 2007 +0200
>  >
>  > Yep -- I found it later -- thanks.
>  >
>  > Ingo, could you please CC me when kernel-userland API changes go into
>  > mainline?  Otherwise, they potentially end up undocumented, and
>  > un(der)used.
>
>  sure.
>
>  We could also add an in-commit-message marker for such changes, that you
>  could periodically scan. Something like:
>
>    User-ABI-extended-by: Ingo Molnar <mingo@elte.hu>
>
>  and:
>
>    User-ABI-modified-by: Ingo Molnar <mingo@elte.hu>
>
>  that way you also know whom to contact about followup questions.
>
>  Declaring such changes would have other benefits as well: the review
>  process becomes more streamlined. Also, any ABI side-effect would be
>  known to be intentional versus unintentional, based on the commit
>  headers alone. Undeclared ABI side-effects would be frowned upon and
>  would be strong grounds for immediate reversal as well.

Sounds like an excellent idea, if we could make it fly.  How can we make it fly?

Cheers,

Michael


-- 
Michael Kerrisk
Maintainer of the Linux man-pages project
http://www.kernel.org/doc/man-pages/
Want to report a man-pages bug?  Look here:
http://www.kernel.org/doc/man-pages/reporting_bugs.html