RFC: Fedora revamp proposal

[Dave Jones]

On Mon, Mar 04, 2013 at 08:35:08PM +0100, Miloslav Trmač wrote:
 > On Mon, Mar 4, 2013 at 7:50 PM, Josh Boyer <jwboyer at gmail.com> wrote:
 > >> 1: Long-term ABI for applications that we don't want to break without
 > >> significant discussion.
 > >>     For now, this will include the stable kernel and libc ABIs
 > >
 > > Please define what you mean by "stable kernel ABI".  Do you mean the
 > > kernel <-> userspace syscall ABI?  If you mean anything other than that
 > > I really don't think it's going to work.
 > 
 > This means "whatever the Linux kernel project says is their stable
 > ABI".  It was not at all intended to expand the ABI boundary.

The only really guaranteed stable ABI the kernel exports is the syscall/ioctl
interface, and to a lesser extent the proc/sysfs ABI.
 
Kernels in rawhide do differ from what we end up shipping in releases,
because they are continually rebased during the merge window/rc phase,
wherein it's entirely possible that a new interface is refined.

We've had situations for example where a new syscall added during the merge window
has had additional parameters added/existing ones changed during -rc phase.

This hasn't been a problem because typically, nothing relies upon an interface in
unreleased kernels, but we need to make it clear here that nothing in new interfaces
is frozen until a .0 release, in case people start thinking "you shipped it in rawhide,
so it must be stable".

	Dave