Never break userspace [LWN.net]

Never break userspace

Posted Feb 16, 2024 16:01 UTC (Fri) by mb (subscriber, #50428)
In reply to: Never break userspace by bluca
Parent article: A turning point for CVE numbers

Well. Technically you are right. The kernel frequently breaks interfaces.
But in reality, systemd and udev are parts of the operating system.
So I don't care that much, if the OS breaks itself. That will get fixed eventually.

What I and most users care about is whether actual user applications break.
And that extremely rarely happens.
I run decades old binaries that work just fine.

It doesn't affect my application, because the OS as a whole still works as before, after porting systemd/udev to the new interfaces. A combination of updated kernel and incompatible systemd/udev would never hit stable distributions.

Therefore, do you have examples of real user applications breaking, that are not part of the OS?

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Never break userspace

Posted Feb 16, 2024 16:08 UTC (Fri) by bluca (subscriber, #118303) [Link] (1 responses)

> Therefore, do you have examples of real user applications breaking, that are not part of the OS?

Need some help with all that goal post moving? Must be exhausting, going that far

Never break userspace

Posted Feb 16, 2024 16:54 UTC (Fri) by mb (subscriber, #50428) [Link]

I have said that you were right. You have said nothing wrong.
There is no such thing as a general interface stability guarantee.

I've just set things into perspective. That is no goal post moving.