How implementation details become ABI: a case study [LWN.net]

How implementation details become ABI: a case study

Posted Oct 9, 2014 22:39 UTC (Thu) by weue (guest, #96562)
In reply to: How implementation details become ABI: a case study by viro
Parent article: How implementation details become ABI: a case study

Among others, "//deleted/PATH" (note the double slash) or "deleted/PATH" (relative path) would have been unambiguous.

Whoever accepted "X (deleted)" is an idiot.

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How implementation details become ABI: a case study

Posted Oct 9, 2014 22:53 UTC (Thu) by viro (subscriber, #7872) [Link]

Whoever it had been, the whole point is that this ship has long sailed. Perhaps the main lesson is that single-use APIs tend to suck. "It's just for fuser and lsof" should've been a major red flag. For _those_ this (deleted) thing was probably more convenient - no need to do anything with the string on the userland side. And it wouldn't be a problem, except that there's no miracles and it *had* gained other users. Worse, now we can't change it without breaking existing userland, as this story has demonstrated.