Google's Fuchsia OS Developer Site Debuts (Forbes)

Posted Jul 1, 2019 18:28 UTC (Mon) by ncultra (✭ supporter ✭, #121511)
In reply to: Google's Fuchsia OS Developer Site Debuts (Forbes) by gregkh
Parent article: Google's Fuchsia OS Developer Site Debuts (Forbes)

Fuchsia drivers run in user space and most of the API is message-based, which means specialization and evolution occur via message protocol changes. I think it is a false comparison to the linux driver API, so read up on the Zircon DDK.

Google's Fuchsia OS Developer Site Debuts (Forbes)

Posted Jul 1, 2019 21:46 UTC (Mon) by mageta (subscriber, #89696) [Link]

Breaking messaging protocols is just as simple as breaking a function-interface. Challenges to support backwards-compatibility remain much the same for both as well - just look at old protocols like SCSI-3 (which is also just message passing basically) and such. In order to support very old version of the protocol you run in danger of collecting a lot of cruft and bit-rot, just as you do in function-call/binary ABIs.

Binary ABIs probably add to the problem, because there is no 'passing-layer', but that is not the only problem in preserving a stable API. The information you pass, may it be function-arguments, or protocol messages have to stay the same for it to claim to be backwards-compatible/stable, and that is the challenge.