Message-ID: <c4b39b28-1f18-c436-e3c5-b015600ca3a2@quicinc.com>
Date:   Fri, 10 Mar 2023 10:20:14 -0800
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Subject: Re: [PATCH v2 0/2] Validating UAPI backwards compatibility
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To:     Christoph Hellwig <hch@infradead.org>,
        John Moon <quic_johmoo@quicinc.com>
CC:     Masahiro Yamada <masahiroy@kernel.org>,
        Nathan Chancellor <nathan@kernel.org>,
        Nick Desaulniers <ndesaulniers@google.com>,
        "Nicolas Schier" <nicolas@fjasle.eu>,
        <linux-kbuild@vger.kernel.org>, <linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org>,
        <linux-arm-kernel@lists.infradead.org>,
        <linux-arm-msm@vger.kernel.org>,
        Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@linuxfoundation.org>,
        Randy Dunlap <rdunlap@infradead.org>,
        "Arnd Bergmann" <arnd@arndb.de>,
        Bjorn Andersson <andersson@kernel.org>,
        Todd Kjos <tkjos@google.com>,
        Matthias Maennich <maennich@google.com>,
        Giuliano Procida <gprocida@google.com>,
        <kernel-team@android.com>, <libabigail@sourceware.org>,
        Jordan Crouse <jorcrous@amazon.com>,
        "Satya Durga Srinivasu Prabhala" <quic_satyap@quicinc.com>,
        Elliot Berman <quic_eberman@quicinc.com>
References: <20230301075402.4578-1-quic_johmoo@quicinc.com>
 <ZArlx5wrw+ZQWUg4@infradead.org>
From:   Trilok Soni <quic_tsoni@quicinc.com>
In-Reply-To: <ZArlx5wrw+ZQWUg4@infradead.org>
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On 3/10/2023 12:09 AM, Christoph Hellwig wrote:
> On Tue, Feb 28, 2023 at 11:54:00PM -0800, John Moon wrote:
>> Our goal is to add tooling for vendor driver developers because the
>> upstream model of expert maintainer code review can be difficult to
>> replicate in-house. Tools may help developers catch simple UAPI
>> incompatibilities that could be easily overlooked by in-house review.
> 
> Why would this matter in any way for the kernel?  If you tool is useful
> for in-kernel usage it should be added to the tree and documented as
> such, but ouf of tree crap simply does not matter.

This tool will be helpful for the kernel maintainers and reviewers as 
well if it can detect potential UAPI backward compatibilities. Even for 
the developers while changing UAPI interfaces at kernel.org before 
submission.

John is trying to highlight also that this tool can be useful for 
downstream users who want to keep the UAPI backward compatibility like 
we do at upstream. We can remove the above text, since we would like to 
mainline it at kernel.org.

---Trilok Soni