Re: Linux -rc3 “In other words: don’t be stupid.”

“On Tue, Jun 14, 2011 at 5:15 AM, Denys Vlasenko wrote:
>
> I’ve got a patch for my project to fix parsing of kernel
version which > has only two numbers. Basically,
> – scanf(ver, “%u.%u.%u”, &a, &b, &c)
> + sscanf(ver, “%u.%u”, &a, &b)

Please just fix it.

The projects that care about kernel version are buggy in so many
ways that it’s not funny.

It’s not just the “two versus three digits” bug either. The
*bigger* bug is usually that the tests are done the wrong way
entirely, namely to fail when you cannot parse the version. And
that’s just f*%!ing stupid!

If you cannot parse the version, then rather than fail, a
project should have gone “uh, it’s some future version that I don’t
recognize or some other OS entirely, so I’ll just do whatever the
most modern thing is”. Having an “assert()” or returning an error
is just the mark of incompetence.

So please just fix things. Preferably by removing the version
check entirely, but if you really feel that you cannot do that,
then AT LEAST realize that the reason you’re looking at the version
is to support *old* versions, not new ones, and make the logic work
that way (so that next time around, when we change the version
numbers to be sanscrit characters and you fail parsing them
*again*, you don’t actually fail, you just go “oh, this is modern”
and go on with your life).

In other words: don’t be stupid.

Ok?

Linus

Complete
Story