On Feb 27, 2006, at 1:01 PM, Greg KH wrote:
Hi all,
As has been noticed recently by a lot of different people, it seems
like
we are breaking the userspace<->kernelspace interface a lot. Well, in
looking back over time, we always have been doing this, but no one
seems
to notice (proc files changing format and location, netlink library
bindings, etc.)
Linux is a dynamic system, we add and change things all the time based
on the need of its developers and users. Because of this, we now
run on
more platforms than any other operating system ever has, from the
world's top supercomputers, to the phone in your pocket. It is how we
have survived so far, and is how we will survive in the future.
In order to ensure that we can continue to be dynamic in the
future, and
not get bogged down by interfaces that are half-baked, or just turn
out
to be wrong once we implement them and find ways to break them (anyone
remember the sys_futex evolution?) we need to be able to handle the
changes in the userspace<->kernelspace ABI properly.
So, here's a first cut at how we can do this. Lots of other operating
systems explicity document what the interfaces to it are, and give a
"stability" rating of those interfaces (for one example, look at
http://opensolaris.org/os/community/onnv/devref_toc/devref_7/ ). I
feel
that we too need to document this interface, in order to keep everyone
in the loop and not cause any unwanted surprises at times they do not
need them (like right before a company's deadline.)
I've sketched out a directory structure that starts in
Documentation/ABI/ and has five different states, "stable", "testing",
"unstable", "obsolete", and "private". The README file describes
these
different states, and how things can move between them. I've also
seeded the directories with some well known examples of the different
interfaces that are already in these states.
So, any comments? Criticisms?
It would be nice if we can come up with some way for Linus to
document state changes in his release notes.
- kumar
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