Messages in this thread | | | From | snpe <> | Subject | Re: Linux 2.4 future | Date | Tue, 2 Dec 2003 19:59:53 +0000 |
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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 <snpe@snpe.co.yu> > > > > 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/
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