Re: RFC: nft.8 review

[Phil Sutter <phil@nwl.cc>]

Hi Mark,

On Tue, Dec 20, 2016 at 10:27:45AM -0600, mark diener wrote:
> Will the V8 NFT have byte level protocol compatibility with current
> linux kernel versions?

We were talking about nft manpage (which happens to live in section 8,
hence why I referred to it as 'nft.8'), not some version 8 (which would
still take a while to come as we're only at version 0.6 ATM).

> I am deployed on kernel  4.4.0-53-generic and would like to know when
> structural defines like RTM_NEWADDR,NLM_F_REQUEST, etc become updated
> or obsoleted.

Not sure I understand you correctly, but why should userspace exported
constants like RTM_NEWADDR or NLM_F_REQUEST become obsolete? This would
break backwards compatibility, which is generally frowned upon.

> As you can likely tell, I am not using libmnl or libnft but using
> direct NETFILTER kernel calls.
> 
> What a challenge to scan the code and reverse-engineer the byte
> sequences and understand the way the NFT virtual machine works in the
> kernel.

Sounds like you're baking your own cake here. I'd say if you decide to
reinvent the wheel, well, then you have to invent a wheel. No? ;)

Cheers, Phil