JFFS2 SUMMARY prior to Linux 3.9

[Kees Cook]

On Wed, Oct 2, 2013 at 10:57 AM, Brian Norris
<computersforpeace at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Mon, Sep 16, 2013 at 1:04 AM, Ricard Wanderlof
> <ricard.wanderlof at axis.com> wrote:
>> I've noticed that JFFS2 summary has been relieved of it's EXPERIMENTAL
>> status since Linux 3.9 . But was it stable enough before then as well? -
>> often the EXPERIMENTAL property lingers on longer that it really needs to.
>
> AFAIK, JFFS2 hasn't changed much for many releases, so its current
> status pretty well reflects its status for many previous releases.
>
> Regarding the EXPERIMENTAL status; this was changed without CC'ing the
> MTD list (although David was CC'd, it seems) in commit:
>
> commit cf98c5e56807af7c793497bbd0446f71c383ffd5
> Author: Kees Cook <keescook at chromium.org>
> Date:   Wed Jan 16 18:54:12 2013 -0800
>
>     fs/jffs2: remove depends on CONFIG_EXPERIMENTAL
>
> Judging by the commit description, this change just represents a
> change in attitude toward the CONFIG_EXPERIMENTAL Kconfig option
> rather than any particular judgment of JFFS2 summary support.

Correct. CONFIG_EXPERIMENTAL was seen to have no meaning any more in
the face of things like distros always turning it on because they
wanted to enable some specific feature/device that was hiding behind
it.

Details about preferred handling of "unstable" features is documented here:
http://git.kernel.org/linus/5a958db311c416345a61b7bddc62a5c6c7112c7f

-Kees

-- 
Kees Cook
Chrome OS Security