Date: Fri, 17 Jul 2015 18:31:17 +0300 From: Konstantin Belousov <kostikbel@gmail.com> To: Julian Elischer <julian@freebsd.org> Cc: Conrad Meyer <cse.cem@gmail.com>, Venkat Duvvuru <venkatkumar.duvvuru@avagotech.com>, current@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Kernel Application Binary Interface (kABI) support in FreeBSD Message-ID: <20150717153117.GD2404@kib.kiev.ua> In-Reply-To: <55A919D7.7020402@freebsd.org> References: <e99bd6bc6ecf65c35f442e4065533c71@mail.gmail.com> <55A9157A.8050208@freebsd.org> <CAG6CVpWd-m3f5EAb9d1Q0zKrvEOmtNO8F1=KWBQNEevaMAiw3A@mail.gmail.com> <55A919D7.7020402@freebsd.org>
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On Fri, Jul 17, 2015 at 11:05:59PM +0800, Julian Elischer wrote: > On 7/17/15 10:59 PM, Conrad Meyer wrote: > > On Fri, Jul 17, 2015 at 7:47 AM, Julian Elischer <julian@freebsd.org> wrote: > >> On 7/17/15 9:02 PM, Venkat Duvvuru wrote: > >>> Hi, > >>> > >>> Is there kABI (Kabi-whitelist) equivalent feature in FreeBSD? > >> well, yes and no. > > Julian, > > > > I believe Venkat is asking about a specific Linux package, > > kabi-whitelists. It contains a list of ABIs considered "stable" in a > > given RHEL release, and a checker that (?)validates programs to only > > contain "stable" calls (guessing a little bit, but it has some sort of > > checker anyway). > > yes I know.. but that is needed because linux does NOT maintain kABI > compatibility. > We don't need it as much. Don't you see the self-contradiction in your statements ? Linux does maintain ABI stability, and the tool asked about, is the tool to ensure that the stability is provided. We try to provide the stability, except when people ignore the issue, or make stupid decisions without concerning the future. And, althought we do have some very basic tools to check the changes in ABI of the given component, but we do not have any registry of the stable ABI and we do not detect the abrupt unintended ABI breakage in automated way. Neither we have a tool to ensure that applications do not mis-use non-public interfaces or interfaces which are not stable. This is a consequence of the missed registry. I noted the provoking haughtiness among many developers WRT ours/Linux ABI stability guarantees, while the real state is exactly opposed. The tirade is written to make more people aware of the thing and raising the desire to keep OS quality higher in this regard.
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