Re: Please decide how kernel ABI should be managed
On Sun, Dec 19, 2010 at 08:19:22PM +0100, Stefano Zacchiroli wrote:
> On Sun, Dec 19, 2010 at 07:30:58PM +0100, Julien BLACHE wrote:
> > I am hereby asking the tech-ctte to decide how the kernel ABI should
> > be managed.
>
> Hi Julien, from the bug log it's pretty clear that there was no
> possibilities of agreement between you and the kernel team, so thanks
> for bringing this issue to tech-ctte.
>
> I've a question for the kernel team, which might help some investigation
> of the tech-ctte. There seem to be two intertwined issue here:
>
> 1) the general policy of kernel ABI maintenance
we try to avoid ABI bumps at our best.
especially in times of release the ABI is kind of frozen due to
d-i requirements. There is no way so shortly before the release
we would bump ABI.
upstream has no ABI rule best read in Documentation/stable_api_nonsense.txt
thus stable updates to indeed change ABI.
> 2) the specific smp_ops issue
>
> You asked ruling about (1), on which there is a clear divergence of
> opinions between you (as bug reporter / user) and the kernel team (as
> package maintainers). Of course ruling about (1) will also address (2),
> one way or the other.
>
> Still, (2) is more urgent, as (I agree on that) it will impact upgrade
> experience of Debian users like Julien, who are forced to use VMWare. No
> matter who is at fault, the choice about (2) will have an impact on a
> specific class of users.
The submitter shows a clear confusion between the requirements of a shared
lib userspace and the linux-2.6 kernel.
Furthermore it is indeed quite unclear if said company is not effectively
violating GPL and several core dev do indeed think so.
--
maks
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