Sat, Aug 08, 2026 at 01:13:56AM +0200, [email protected] wrote: >On Mon, Aug 03, 2026 at 01:59:07PM +0200, Jiri Pirko wrote: > >> That is not doable in UAPI. Some userspace app, like rdma-core in >> this case, might use it and rename breaks the compilation. Some other >> app you don't know about may use it. > >Linus actualy had some comments on this once (which I will never be >able to find I guess), but we broadly follow what he outlined. The >userspace has copies of the kernel headers embedded in it. When the >kernel headers change the user space updates it's copy and fixes any >build breaks. > >So long as the build breaks are fixable, and don't change the ABI, it >is fine. > >Many parts of the kernel work like this because userspace is not >supposed to directly use the kernel headers themselves, they are >supposed to be sanitized by glibc or some other helper library. > >There are a few places that don't work like this of course..
Yeah, me being mainly netdev-guy, that was never allowed there. Not sure about now. But makes sense. Would be nice to have it explicitly documented in kernel docs though. Thanks!
