From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S264343AbTLBUxV (ORCPT ); Tue, 2 Dec 2003 15:53:21 -0500 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S264345AbTLBUxV (ORCPT ); Tue, 2 Dec 2003 15:53:21 -0500 Received: from mx1.verat.net ([217.26.64.139]:56012 "EHLO mx1.verat.net") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S264343AbTLBUxT (ORCPT ); Tue, 2 Dec 2003 15:53:19 -0500 From: snpe To: Linus Torvalds , Jan-Benedict Glaw Subject: Re: Linux 2.4 future Date: Tue, 2 Dec 2003 19:59:53 +0000 User-Agent: KMail/1.5.2 Cc: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, Christoph Hellwig , Marcelo Tosatti References: <20031202063912.GD16507@lug-owl.de> In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline Message-Id: <200312021959.53095.snpe@snpe.co.yu> Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Does anyone work on transfer linux-abi to kernel 2.6 ? regards On Tuesday 02 December 2003 06:04 pm, Linus Torvalds wrote: > On Tue, 2 Dec 2003, Jan-Benedict Glaw wrote: > > On Tue, 2003-12-02 02:23:55 +0000, snpe > > > > wrote in message <200312020223.55505.snpe@snpe.co.yu>: > > > Is there linux-abi for 2.6 kernel ? > > > > Nobody really cares about ABI (at least, not enough to keep one stable) > > while there's a good API. That requires sources, though, but that's a > > good thing... > > People care _deeply_ about the user-visible Linux ABI - I personally think > backwards compatibility is absolutely _the_ most important issue for any > kernel, and breaking user-land ABI's is simply not done. > > Sometimes we tweak user-visible stuff (for example, removing truly > obsolete system calls), but even then we're very very careful. Like > printing out warning messages for several _years_ before actually removing > the functionality. > > The one exception tends to be "system management" ABI's, ie stuff that > normal programs don't use. So kernel updates do sometimes require new > utilities for doing things like firewall configuration, hardware setup > (ethernet tools, ifconfig etc), or - in the case of 2.6 - module loading > and unloading. Even that is frowned upon, and there has to be a good > reason for it. > > At times, we've modified semantics of existing system behaviour subtly: > either to conform to standards, or because of implementation issues. It > doesn't happen often, and if it is found to break existing applications it > is not done at all (and the thing is fixed by adding a new system call > with the proper semantics, and leaving the old one broken). > > You are, however, correct when it comes to internal kernel interfaces: we > care not at all about ABI's, and even API's are fluid and are freely > changed if there is a real technical reason for it. But that is only true > for the internal kernel stuff (where source is obviously a requirement > anyway). > > Linus > - > To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in > the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org > More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html > Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/