I'd like to revive my proposal that the kernel team should not attempt to keep the kernel ABI stable across point releases, but only do so in jessie-security (i.e. maintain the ABI implemented in the preceding point release). This would apply starting with jessie. We discussed this at DebConf 13; see https://penta.debconf.org/penta/schedule/dc13/event/1017.en.html and gobby.debian.org:debconf13/bof/linux-module-abi The problems I identified were (a) APT configuration and other packages prevented auto-removal of unused kernel packages and could lead to a full /boot filesystem, and (b) rebuilding OOT modules would be a burden for users and administrators. However the APT configuration was already fixed at that time in unstable. In jessie, the virtual package 'linux-image' is no longer provided, so (a) is solved, aside from binary module packages (but not DKMS module packages) that depend on the old kernel packages. (b) is not, but a requirement to rebuild OOT modules at point releases seems like a relatively minor burden. Most other distributions have this requirement, and point releases are announced so this shouldn't be too surprising (except maybe the first time). One downside for us as maintainers would be that we couldn't merge from jessie(-proposed-updates) to jessie-security except straight after a point release. (We have sometimes done the corresponding merge for squeeze and wheezy.) Ben. -- Ben Hutchings Never put off till tomorrow what you can avoid all together.
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