On Tue, 2019-08-27 at 19:09 +0200, Greg KH wrote:
> On Tue, Aug 27, 2019 at 04:34:15PM +0100, Ben Hutchings wrote:
> > On Tue, 2019-08-27 at 22:42 +1000, Nicholas Piggin wrote:
> > > Masahiro Yamada's on August 27, 2019 8:49 pm:
[...]
> > > > modversions is ugly, so it would be great if we could dump it.
> > > > 
> > > > > IIRC (without re-reading it all), in theory distros would be okay
> > > > > without modversions if they could just provide their own explicit
> > > > > versioning. They take care about ABIs, so they can version things
> > > > > carefully if they had to change.
> > 
> > Debian doesn't currently have any other way of detecting ABI changes
> > (other than eyeballing diffs).
> > 
> > I know there have been proposals of using libabigail for this instead,
> > but I'm not sure how far those progressed.
> 
> Google has started using libabigail to track api changes in AOSP, here's
> a patch that updates the ABI file after changing it:
> 	https://android-review.googlesource.com/c/kernel/common/+/1108662
> 
> Note, there are issues with it, and some rough edges, but I think it can
> work.

Thanks for the pointer.

> But, it means nothing at module load time, this is only at build-check
> time.  At least modversions would prevent module loading in some cases.

Right, but I *think* that would be enough if we could mark modules for
strict (exact version) or loose ("ABI version") matching as I outlined.

Ben.

-- 
Ben Hutchings
I'm always amazed by the number of people who take up solipsism because
they heard someone else explain it. - E*Borg on alt.fan.pratchett