On Tue, Apr 21, 2009 at 07:48:21AM -0700, Garrett D'Amore wrote: > I. Szczesniak wrote: > >Could you elaborate the difference between Committed and Committed > >Obsolete? > > Committed Obsolete means we can't remove it, but you're still > discouraged from using it in new code. That's the case with -b -- it is > used to indicate a count in blocks (512 bytes), but the option was > removed from the POSIX standard over confusion about what was meant by a > "block" (is it a block of bytes, or a block of characters?)
Actually, it's more subtle than that. "Committed Obsolete" is a composition of "Committed" and "Obsolete". The former relates to when backwards incompatible changes are allowed, the latter relates to when removal is allowed. Which means that "Committed Obsolete" really means "we won't break this interface, but we are free to remove it after <date> (and in a suitable release vehicle)". Nico --
