[cip-dev] Maintenance policies and early considerations IV

[hidehiro.kawai.ez@hitachi.com (Hidehiro Kawai)]

Hi,

(2016/09/27 17:29), Agustin Benito Bethencourt wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> On 22/09/16 14:59, Agustin Benito Bethencourt wrote:
>> Hi,
>>
>> at CIP we need to have a clear view of what "Support" means in the
>> context of the Super Long Term Support kernel.
>>
>> ++ What kind of support will CIP provide? To whom?
>>
>> CIP will support its members and their developers, not system
>> administrators or end users.  With the current number of members, there
>> should not be a need for a 'first line' of support between them and the
>> CIP core developers, though that may change if membership grows
>> significantly.

We (our company members) agree.

>> Commercial Linux based distributions like RHEL promise that a subset of
>> the kernel module API and ABI remains stable within a major release, so
>> that many out-of-tree modules can be used without needing to update the
>> module source or binaries along with the kernel.  Some IHVs rely on this
>> to distribute driver modules in binary form.
>>
>> CIP should avoid making any such promise because:
>>
>> * Upstream fixes frequently change the kernel module API and/or ABI and
>> backporting them in a way that does not is difficult and risky   - CIP
>> users set their own kernel configurations, so there will not be a single
>> kernel ABI for IHVs to target anyway
> 
> Correction:
> 
> Upstream fixes frequently change the kernel module API and/or ABI and 
> backporting them in a way that is difficult and risky   - CIP users set 
> their own kernel configurations, so there will not be a single kernel 
> ABI for IHVs to target anyway
> 
>>
>> * CIP users are responsible for binary releases of both the kernel and
>> out-of-tree modules, so can ensure that they are properly synchronised.
>>
>> * The criteria for backporting bug fixes will presumably be based on
>> 'stable-kernel-rules.txt'.  However, In CIP context, it is recommended
>> to be more precise than that.

We think CIP doesn't need to kepp the kernel API/ABI.

Best regards,

Hidehiro Kawai
Hitachi, Ltd. Research & Development Group