Re: [PATCH 07/12] AppArmor: userspace interfaces

[Stephen Hemminger <shemminger@vyatta.com>]

On Tue, 10 Nov 2009 17:44:27 +0100
Andi Kleen <andi@firstfloor.org> wrote:

> Pekka Enberg <penberg@cs.helsinki.fi> writes:
> 
> > On Tue, Nov 10, 2009 at 6:13 PM, John Johansen
> > <john.johansen@canonical.com> wrote:
> >> The current apparmorfs interface is compatible with previous versions
> >> of AppArmor.  The plans are to deprecate it (hence the config option
> >> APPARMOR_COMPAT_24) and replace it with a more sysfs style single
> >> entry per file interface.
> >
> > We don't usually merge compatibility code to handle ABIs that were
> > developed out-of-tree. Why should we treat AppArmor differently?
> 
> I would say that always depends on the deployed base of the old ABI.
> If there's a lot of users who would get broken I think there's a
> good case for merging compat code (I don't know if that is or
> isn't the case here). 
> 
> A widely used distribution release with the old user land would
> probably count.
> 

Then the distribution can maintain a patch to add the necessary translation

It is not the upstream kernel's job to maintain compatibility with older
out of tree code.