From owner-freebsd-arch Tue Nov 26 23:27:41 2002 Delivered-To: freebsd-arch@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 0515E37B401; Tue, 26 Nov 2002 23:27:40 -0800 (PST) Received: from harmony.village.org (rover.bsdimp.com [204.144.255.66]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 4873843EB2; Tue, 26 Nov 2002 23:27:39 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from imp@bsdimp.com) Received: from localhost (warner@rover2.village.org [10.0.0.1]) by harmony.village.org (8.12.3/8.12.3) with ESMTP id gAR7RSpk054656; Wed, 27 Nov 2002 00:27:35 -0700 (MST) (envelope-from imp@bsdimp.com) Date: Wed, 27 Nov 2002 00:26:57 -0700 (MST) Message-Id: <20021127.002657.21921523.imp@bsdimp.com> To: phk@critter.freebsd.dk Cc: rwatson@FreeBSD.ORG, arch@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: ABIs and 5.x branch: freeze kernel module ABI at 5.0 or 5.1? From: "M. Warner Losh" In-Reply-To: <2079.1038351585@critter.freebsd.dk> References: <2079.1038351585@critter.freebsd.dk> X-Mailer: Mew version 2.1 on Emacs 21.2 / Mule 5.0 (SAKAKI) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: Text/Plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-freebsd-arch@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk List-ID: List-Archive: (Web Archive) List-Help: (List Instructions) List-Subscribe: List-Unsubscribe: X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG In message: <2079.1038351585@critter.freebsd.dk> Poul-Henning Kamp writes: : In message , Robe : rt Watson writes: : : >As such, I think a reasonable strategy would be to avoid exactly that: : >rather than making guarantees about the ABI for 5.0, simply assert that : >the ABI for kernel drivers will not be frozen until 5.1, so vendors should : >be aware that they may have to rebuild their driver. We've already : >indicated that the 5.0 release will be for "early adopters"--I want to : >avoid having things stand in the way of kicking the 5.x branch into shape : >in as much as is possible. Any thoughts? : : It's very simple in my mind: we only freeze ABI's on -stable branches : (and we actually even violated that for 4-stable I belive). : : Whenever we branch a new -stable from -current, that's when we freeze : the ABI's for that branch. That's my view as well. However, while we don't want to unduely constrain the developers, I think that the project wants to say "don't change the ABIs needlessly." Don't resort values just to resort them, don't rearrange structure members just because you can, etc. If you need to do it for a compelling reason, then that's OK. Warner To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-arch" in the body of the message