Hello, On Mon, Jun 23, 2008 at 1:23 AM, Andrew Lentvorski <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> You can maintain a stable API or even ABI *even through massive > revisions*.`--see FreeBSD, >From FreeBSD 7.0 Release notes: "Several minor but widespread changes to the Newbus API have been made In order to support some on-going work with interrupt filtering. Because this change also breaks the kernel ABI, all third-party device drivers will need to be modified and recompiled." http://www.freebsd.org/releases/7.0R/relnotes.html > ... Solaris and AIX. I haven't checked, but I doubt a driver for earlier versions of Solaris(SunOS) and AIX would work on never versions. > ... You just shim the old API over > the new one. Even major *userland* application systems try to maintain > API's within major versions. Are we talking about kernel API's? or Userland API's? > Quoting: > "(unused interfaces are pretty much impossible to test for validity.)" > > Uh, no. Tests don't suddenly stop working or lose their validity. Oh, but, > wait, that would imply that you have *tests*. And we all know that Linux > doesn't. Are you implying that NO Linux kernel hackers use any type of regression testing? And that there is NO Linux kernel tests? Because of the way that the Linux kernel development has evolved, there was not (at least until recently) a "Core Team" who made policy decisions. If anybody showed up with code that "looked" good, it was put in. This is what OpenSource means. Currently, the main subsystems have maintainers, so the Kernel API is stabilizing somewhat, but still changes. This doesn't force drivers to be included into the kernel, but it does entice them to. This way the person who changes a kernel API is also responsible for for changes all the drivers that use that API. As far as the "ethernet adapters" stability goes, it wasn't because the kernel API became stable, it was because (almost) ALL of the NICs code got merged into the mainline Linux kernel tree. If you haven't read it yet, another Greg K-H rant about kernel development myths: http://www.kroah.com/log/linux/ols_2006_keynote.html m2c, Steve -- [email protected] http://www.kernel-panic.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/kplug-list
