Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1752610AbcCNQnd (ORCPT ); Mon, 14 Mar 2016 12:43:33 -0400 Received: from forward16h.cmail.yandex.net ([87.250.230.158]:38772 "EHLO forward16h.cmail.yandex.net" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1751263AbcCNQnc (ORCPT ); Mon, 14 Mar 2016 12:43:32 -0400 X-Greylist: delayed 468 seconds by postgrey-1.27 at vger.kernel.org; Mon, 14 Mar 2016 12:43:31 EDT From: Ponomarenko Andrey To: opensuse-kernel@opensuse.org, "linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org" Subject: A new approach to verify changes in the Linux kernel ABI MIME-Version: 1.0 Message-Id: <493501457973339@web8h.yandex.ru> X-Mailer: Yamail [ http://yandex.ru ] 5.0 Date: Mon, 14 Mar 2016 19:35:39 +0300 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Type: text/plain Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org List-ID: X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Content-Length: 1074 Lines: 21 Hello, I've released new versions of the abi-compliance-checker and abi-dumper tools that are now able to easily verify compatibility of changes in the Linux kernel ABI: https://github.com/lvc/ 1. The kernel should be compiled with CONFIG_DEBUG_INFO=y and CONFIG_DEBUG_INFO_REDUCED=n additional options. 2. Create ABI dump for vmlinux: abi-dumper vmlinux -vnum 4.4.5 -kernel-export -o ABI.dump 3. Compare ABI dumps to produce report: abi-compliance-checker -l kernel -bin -old ABI-0.dump -new ABI-1.dump The new -kernel-export option of the abi-dumper is introduced to dump only public exported symbols of the kernel, i.e. declared in the ksymtab/ksymtab_gpl binary sections + system calls. I've applied this approach on the recent releases of the Linux kernel (2.6.36-4.4.5) as an example and prepared the compatibility table here: http://abi-laboratory.pro/tracker/timeline/linux/ The distribution specific changes in the kernel can be verified in the same way to prevent/minimize ABI differences with upstream or between sequential releases. Thank you.