Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1750702AbWCYDUc (ORCPT ); Fri, 24 Mar 2006 22:20:32 -0500 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S1750703AbWCYDUc (ORCPT ); Fri, 24 Mar 2006 22:20:32 -0500 Received: from dsl092-053-140.phl1.dsl.speakeasy.net ([66.92.53.140]:32478 "EHLO grelber.thyrsus.com") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1750702AbWCYDUb (ORCPT ); Fri, 24 Mar 2006 22:20:31 -0500 From: Rob Landley To: Kyle Moffett Subject: Re: State of userland headers Date: Fri, 24 Mar 2006 22:19:54 -0500 User-Agent: KMail/1.8.3 Cc: Nix , Mariusz Mazur , LKML Kernel , llh-discuss@lists.pld-linux.org References: <200603141619.36609.mmazur@kernel.pl> <878xqzpl8g.fsf@hades.wkstn.nix> In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline Message-Id: <200603242219.54677.rob@landley.net> Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Content-Length: 950 Lines: 25 On Friday 24 March 2006 5:46 pm, Kyle Moffett wrote: > however. Since the kabi/*.h headers would not be kernel-version- > specific, they could be copied to a system running an older kernel > and reused there without problems. Since when is the kernel ABI not kernel version specific? You can use an older ABI on a newer kernel, but you can't use a newer ABI on an older kernel. > Even though some of the syscalls > and ioctls referenced in the kabi headers might not be present on the > running kernel, portable programs are expected to be able to sanely > handle older kernels. At the source level, maybe. At the binary level? Not really. Rob -- Never bet against the cheap plastic solution. - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/