LWN: Comments on "Monitoring the internal kernel ABI"

Monitoring the internal kernel ABI

Conan_Kudo — Thu, 26 Sep 2019 04:35:06 +0000

The conversation about kABIs in this article is pretty reasonable, but one thing I worry about is that Google acquiescing to creating a stabilized kABI for Android systems will actually further reduce the incentive for the Android ecosystem to contribute to the mainline kernel.

There isn't that much incentive as it stands, admittedly, but it would be nice to see actions taken to increase incentives (maybe a stronger carrot and stick approach?) to contribute to mainline with FOSS drivers...

Monitoring the internal kernel ABI

gbalane — Wed, 25 Sep 2019 18:04:30 +0000

Good to know there is automation. This is done manually today by Red Hat and Oracle (UEK) kernel who maintains stable KABI by using whitelists.
There is also padding done for certain Kernel structures to make room for keeping stable ABI for the life of the kernel based on one stable tree release.
As is evident, the stable KABI is required for any out of tree kernel drivers. This an be reduced if vendors contribute back to upstream on a timely manner.