Date: Wed, 27 Nov 2002 00:26:57 -0700 (MST) From: "M. Warner Losh" <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? Message-ID: <20021127.002657.21921523.imp@bsdimp.com> In-Reply-To: <2079.1038351585@critter.freebsd.dk> References: <Pine.NEB.3.96L.1021126174032.88614J-100000@fledge.watson.org> <2079.1038351585@critter.freebsd.dk>
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In message: <2079.1038351585@critter.freebsd.dk>
Poul-Henning Kamp <phk@critter.freebsd.dk> writes:
: In message <Pine.NEB.3.96L.1021126174032.88614J-100000@fledge.watson.org>, 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
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