Re: A generic kernel compatibilty code

Luis R. Rodriguez
2009-11-23T16:20:22Z

On Mon, Nov 23, 2009 at 5:26 AM, Ben Hutchings
<bhutchings@solarflare.com> wrote:
> On Fri, 2009-11-20 at 13:07 -0800, Luis R. Rodriguez wrote:
>> On Fri, Nov 20, 2009 at 1:00 PM, Ben Hutchings
>> <bhutchings@solarflare.com> wrote:
>> > On Fri, 2009-11-20 at 12:45 -0800, Luis R. Rodriguez wrote:
>> >> Everyone and their mother reinvents the wheel when it comes to
>> >> backporting kernel modules. It a painful job and it seems to me an
>> >> alternative is possible. If we can write generic compatibilty code for
>> >> a new routine introduced on the next kernel how about just merging it
>> >> to the kernel under some generic compat module. This would be
>> >> completey ignored by everyone using the stable kernel but can be
>> >> copied by anyone doing backport work.
>> >>
>> >> So I'm thinking something as simple as a generic compat/comat.ko with
>> >> compat-2.6.32.[ch] files.
>> >>
>> >> We've already backported everything needed for wireless drivers under
>> >> compat-wireless under this format down to even 2.6.25.
>> > [...]
>> >
>> > If you think 2.6.25 is old then I don't think you understand the scale
>> > of the problem.
>> >
>> > OEMs still expect us to support RHEL 4 (2.6.9) and SLES 9 (2.6.5) though
>> > the latter will probably be dropped soon.  Some other vendors apparently
>> > still need to support even 2.4 kernels!
>>
>> Heh understood. Well shouldn't this help with that then? Sure I'd love
>> to see the Enteprise Linux releases on 2.6.31 but that's not going to
>> happen right? Shouldn't this help then?
>
> You'd really have to ask the 'enterprise' vendors whether they'd be
> interested in working on some sort of shared forward-compat library.

OK will do thanks.

> If the library is to include a module rather than being statically linked
> into each module that needs it then there can only be one instance in
> the system.

Sure, that's the idea.

Luis