Re: Changes to PM layer break userspace

On Tuesday 19 December 2006 8:26 pm, Matthew Garrett wrote:
On Tue, Dec 19, 2006 at 07:59:42PM -0800, David Brownell wrote:

The existence of the power/state interface wasn't a bug - it was a
deliberate decision to add it. It's the only reason the
dpm_runtime_suspend() interface exists.

All that buggy infrastructure talks together, yes. Those dpm_*()
calls are in the same "will remove" task item.


It's perfectly reasonable to
refer to it as a flawed interface, or perhaps even a buggy one. But in
itself, it's clearly not a bug.

This class of bug is also called a "design bug" or sometimes "mistake".


In contrast, the /sys/devices/.../power/state API has never had many
users beyond developers trying to test their drivers (without taking
the whole system into a low power state, which probably didn't work
in any case), and has *always* been problematic. And the change you
object to doesn't "break" anything fundamental, either. Everything
still works.

It's used on every Ubuntu and Suse system,

Odd how the relevant Suse developers didn't mention any issues with
those files going away, any of the times problems with them were
discussed on the PM list. Also, I have a Suse system that doesn't
use those files for anything ... maybe only newer release use it.

I've got some Ubuntu going too, which hasn't (visibly) suffered from
any of these changes.

- dave
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