From owner-freebsd-hackers Thu Mar 6 8:36:19 2003 Delivered-To: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 1602937B401 for ; Thu, 6 Mar 2003 08:36:18 -0800 (PST) Received: from harmony.village.org (rover.bsdimp.com [204.144.255.66]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 3DC6343FBF for ; Thu, 6 Mar 2003 08:36:17 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from imp@bsdimp.com) Received: from localhost (warner@rover2.village.org [10.0.0.1]) by harmony.village.org (8.12.8/8.12.3) with ESMTP id h26GaDA7038100; Thu, 6 Mar 2003 09:36:13 -0700 (MST) (envelope-from imp@bsdimp.com) Date: Thu, 06 Mar 2003 09:35:52 -0700 (MST) Message-Id: <20030306.093552.04191775.imp@bsdimp.com> To: gallatin@cs.duke.edu Cc: hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Smarter kernel modules? From: "M. Warner Losh" In-Reply-To: <15975.26321.697361.250384@grasshopper.cs.duke.edu> References: <20030306030852.GA1158@edgemaster.zombie.org> <20030305.214439.00238175.imp@bsdimp.com> <15975.26321.697361.250384@grasshopper.cs.duke.edu> 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-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk List-ID: List-Archive: (Web Archive) List-Help: (List Instructions) List-Subscribe: List-Unsubscribe: X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG In message: <15975.26321.697361.250384@grasshopper.cs.duke.edu> Andrew Gallatin writes: : My company ships a binary driver ("ethernet" network, and character : device) built on 4.1.1-R, and it has continued to work at least until : 4.7-R. I'd like to see that same level of ABI stability throughout : the 5-STABLE branch. I'd like to see that too, which is one reason that I'd want a simple, rarely incremented single number. Make it too easy to bump the number, and you get into the mess you have with Linux and complain about. We already have versioning issues with the current modules system we have, but experience over the past two releases has shown that nobody uses it. Also, this isn't anti-foot shooting for -current. On -current you live with the pain, and like it. current module writers haven't been able to bump version reliably in the past 5 years, and I don't think that something magical is going to happen to make them do it now. This is for the production side of FreeBSD, not the bleeding edge. Warner To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-hackers" in the body of the message