There should be no binary compatibilty problem. [LWN.net]

There should be no binary compatibilty problem.

Posted Jan 29, 2004 15:36 UTC (Thu) by r6144 (guest, #3443)
Parent article: Shrinking the kernel with gcc

Modules are already supposed to be used on the same kernel they are compiled for (same version, same config, same compiler options, basically the identical vmlinuz). Sure, there are hacks that allow some modules to be loaded on other kernels (with similar versions), but no Linux vendors or hardware vendors shipping binary-only modules are asking their users to do so --- if your kernel version isn't supported, they either tell you to do some compilation (like what NVidia does) or just use some popular vendor kernel.

In this situation, how can changing the module ABI now break anything? Just recompile all your modules, including NVidia-style ones. If [insert the most popular kernel vendor here] ships their next kernel using this patch, binary-module vendors that ship only .ko files will make a version for it... a new version will be needed even for a new kernel without this patch.

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