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No, the quote is not only about single-step debugging; his next sentence is: "I do not think that extra visibility into the system is necessarily a good thing."

No, the quote is not only about single-step debugging; his next sentence is: "I do not think that extra visibility into the system is necessarily a good thing." And if that still leaves too much ambiguity for you as to his thinking, read the rest of the screed -- and then remember how we got here: because it took someone two painful days to configure something that is considered core functionality on many other systems.

richardwhiuk 9y ago
It's a lot easier to configure using the modern API - the author is intentionally choosing an API which doesn't give much feedback....
- xenophonf 9y ago
  That's true, but the author has solid reasons for doing so: > I want my application to work on OS X and Linux, so I’m targeting PF_KEYv2 instead of OS-specific APIs.
  - makomk 9y ago
    If the reason he's using a horribly unfriendly and difficult to debug API is because it's cross-platform and the more developer-friendly replacement is Linux only, then the fact that the API is so hostile certainly isn't proof - as bcantrill was claiming - that Linux is somehow going out of its way to be hostile to developers compared to competing OSes.
    - alambert 9y ago
      PF_KEYv2's difficult interface definitely isn't a Linux issue. But PF_KEYv2's limited error reporting means that understanding what's going wrong requires kernel debugging. The difficulty of kernel debugging is a Linux issue. ("I do not condone single-stepping through code to find the bug.") [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15953644 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15953644