Re: MFC of socket/protocol reference improvements

On Sun, 11 Jun 2006, Robert Watson wrote:

(1) Normally, RELENG_* has significant constraints on changes to the kernel
APIs used by loadable modules -- especially for device drivers. In the
past, we've not made a lot of changes to the protocol switch interface,
and historically it hasn't been a run-time extensible interface. Andre
has recent made changes to allow IP protocols to be loaded at runtime,
such as IP divert, and these will be affected, however. Do we consider
modules programmed against these interfaces to be "breakable" -- i.e., the
require a recompile and or changes in the RELENG_6 branch?

From a policy standpoint, breaking modules in a -STABLE branch is
forbidden since it causes pain for 3rd party developers. Exceptions can be made for changes that provide more benefit than damage caused by breaking the ABI.

Usually the question revolves around, "Does anyone actually distribute modules that use that interface?" :-)

--
Doug White | FreeBSD: The Power to Serve
dwhite@xxxxxxxxxxxxx | www.FreeBSD.org
_______________________________________________
freebsd-arch@xxxxxxxxxxx mailing list
http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-arch
To unsubscribe, send any mail to "freebsd-arch-unsubscribe@xxxxxxxxxxx"

Relevant Pages

  • Re: svn commit: r180256 - head/sys/dev/arl
    ... library to device drivers, rather than a required interface to transmit. ... This would allow the device driver to instantiate more than one if there are multiple hardware queues that need to be represented, or, for example, allow synthetic encapsulation interfaces to avoid queueing entirely and directly dispatch to the lower layer interface without requiring a mandatory enqueue/dequeue step. ... However, for vlans, I think it would significantly lower overhead without really modifying queueing behavior: notice that we enqueue it at the VLAN layer just to dequeue it a few instructions later so that we can enqueue it a layer lower. ...
    (freebsd-net)
  • design of interface b/w application module and device drivers
    ... I am working on developing an efficient interface between application ... layer modules and device drivers for an optoelectronic module. ... How is the interface provided in linux OS? ... Is this design worth moving forward? ...
    (comp.os.linux.development.system)
  • Re: Sony CDs are not safe to play in a Windows computer
    ... applications (so you can have an EXE which works on any of them), the interface to device drivers depends upon the kernel. ...
    (rec.arts.anime.misc)
  • Re: Sony CDs are not safe to play in a Windows computer
    ... > The biggest giveaway is that device drivers come in three flavours: ... > While all of the above provide roughly the same interface to applications ...
    (rec.arts.anime.misc)