Re: [Infiniband-general] Getting an Infiniband access layer in the linux kernel

[Jamie Lokier <jamie@shareable.org>]

Greg KH wrote:
> > Are there any other examples of drivers that isolate kernel specific
> > calls to one module or file of their code to ease portability between
> > different revisions of the kernel ? If not, maybe they should look at
> > what we have done, it might save them some headaches in the future. 
> 
> No, that is not how Linux kernel development is done.  Come on people,
> do your research...

To clarify:

For out-of-tree 3rd party drivers, there are two or three
"compatibility" packages which are used to allow a single driver
source to work with many kernel versions.  (I wrote one, it is used
for quite a few private drivers.  This method works well.  See
also "kcompat").

For drivers in the kernel tree, or drivers that somone would like to
go into the tree, "compatibility" headers are never used.  API changes
are for good reasons; drivers need to be updated to follow them.

When the kernel APIs change, for minor changes and sometimes even
major ones, the author of the API change will often go through all the
in tree drivers making the necessary changes.

-- Jamie