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Linux 6.19 Gets Rid Of The Kernel's "Genocide" Function (www.phoronix.com)

submitted 1 day ago by cm0002@lemmy.cafe to c/linux@programming.dev

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While the Linux kernel has inclusive terminology guidelines for the past five years to replace phrases like master/slave and blacklist/whitelist, there has surprisingly been a "genocide" function within the kernel that was questioned when it was first submitted for inclusion but now removed in Linux 6.19.

Introduced to the Linux kernel back in 2023 was the d_genocide() function as part of various dcache updates to the kernel. The genocide name was questioned when the patches were first posted by longtime Linux developer Al Viro

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[–] MartianSands@sh.itjust.works 14 points 1 day ago

The reason I tend to object to these things is that bikeshedding isn't free, it creates work and technical debt. That raises the bar for changes we ought to make, and I think it raises it quite a lot higher than objections which are frequently specific to the US and are largely imaginary (which is my honest interpretation of most of these changes).

That said, "genocide" is clearly unnecessarily provocative. It's also not an industry-wide change, it's just one function, so this particular change seems sensible to me