Mark the API beta

Posted Sep 28, 2007 14:14 UTC (Fri) by addw (guest, #1771)
Parent article: The new timerfd() API

Someone recently made a comment that a non trivial program should be written[**] to use the new API before it became set in stone. I certainly think that this would be a good idea. Some API additions are obviously right, but with most of them I expect that this is not so until it has been tested in real usage.

Perhaps new APIs should be flagged beta until this has been done and the result discussed. The reason that we don't like changing APIs is because it will break code "out there" - ie code that we don't know about. If someone wants to use a beta API then they take it upon themselves to check that the kernel API has not changed.

Kernel developers should be encouraged to listen to application developers who use beta APIs.

[**] or something existing adapted to use it.