From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: from mail143.messagelabs.com (mail143.messagelabs.com [216.82.254.35]) by kanga.kvack.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id C82F5900086 for ; Wed, 13 Apr 2011 15:21:04 -0400 (EDT) Date: Wed, 13 Apr 2011 12:19:25 -0700 From: Andrew Morton Subject: Re: [PATCH] mm/thp: Use conventional format for boolean attributes Message-Id: <20110413121925.55493041.akpm@linux-foundation.org> In-Reply-To: References: <1300772711.26693.473.camel@localhost> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-linux-mm@kvack.org List-ID: To: David Rientjes Cc: Ben Hutchings , Andrea Arcangeli , linux-mm@kvack.org, Mel Gorman , Johannes Weiner , Rik van Riel , Hugh Dickins On Wed, 13 Apr 2011 12:04:59 -0700 (PDT) David Rientjes 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? :) -- To unsubscribe, send a message with 'unsubscribe linux-mm' in the body to majordomo@kvack.org. For more info on Linux MM, see: http://www.linux-mm.org/ . Fight unfair telecom internet charges in Canada: sign http://stopthemeter.ca/ Don't email: email@kvack.org