Re: [PATCH] mm/thp: Use conventional format for boolean attributes

[Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>]

On Wed, 13 Apr 2011 12:04:59 -0700 (PDT)
David Rientjes <rientjes@google.com> wrote:

> On Tue, 22 Mar 2011, Ben Hutchings wrote:
> 
> > The conventional format for boolean attributes in sysfs is numeric
> > ("0" or "1" followed by new-line).  Any boolean attribute can then be
> > read and written using a generic function.  Using the strings
> > "yes [no]", "[yes] no" (read), "yes" and "no" (write) will frustrate
> > this.
> > 
> > Cc'd to stable in order to change this before many scripts depend on
> > the current strings.
> > 
> 
> I agree with this in general, it's certainly the standard way of altering 
> a boolean tunable throughout the kernel so it would be nice to use the 
> same userspace libraries with THP.

yup.

It's a bit naughty to change the existing interface in 2.6.38.x but the time
window is small and few people will be affected and they were nuts to be
using 2.6.38.0 anyway ;)

I suppose we could support both the old and new formats for a while,
then retire the old format but I doubt if it's worth it.

Isn't there some user documentation which needs to be updated to
reflect this change?  If not, why not?  :)

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