Re: Header files and the kernel ABI

Eric W. Biederman
2002-07-27T11:38:02Z

Oliver Xymoron <oxymoron@waste.org> writes:
>
> The idea of maintaining them separately is that people won't be able to
> touch the ABI without explicitly going through a gatekeeper whose job is
> to minimize breakage. Linus usually catches ABI changes but not always.
>
> I explicitly did _not_ suggest making it the job of libc maintainers. And
> the whole point of the exercise is to avoid ABI of the day anyway. The ABI
> should change less frequently than the kernel or libc. It's more analogous
> to something like modutils.

Except for ioctls. Until we can get those under control the abi headers
need to remain part of the kernel. Gatekeeping on the ioctls is something
we need.

And even if the code is part of the kernel, Linus can still delegate
the work of verifying it he wants.

Eric