[AFS3-std] RxOSD claim on 2 structure members

Harald Barth haba@kth.se
Mon, 08 Jun 2009 04:58:52 +0200 (CEST)


> This is an impossible request.  Not all parties that may have developed
> private uses for these fields participate on this list.  

Please be careful with words like "impossible". ;-) I'd say "difficult".

> The fact that at least two parties that are known have created private
> uses for field that are otherwise unused in the OpenAFS implementation
> simply demonstrates that reusing otherwise allocated protocol components
> is dangerous and should not be done. 

The question is not how many private uses of this field there is. The
queuestion is if this field ist still used somewhere as "SyncCounter".
If there is no use as "SyncCounter" I see no problem with fixing the
bug that it is named "SyncCounter" and rename it and use it for
_something_. That might of course break other incompatible changes.

Another thing to think about is _how_much_ it would break if interop
with other private implemenatations actually happens. With careful
coding, impact can be minimized. 

> What we should start doing to move the process forward is to
> collect a list ...

That, too.

If a new RPC can be shelled out relatively fast, the need to use
existing ones for "other purposes" is minimized.

Harald.