On Aug 12, 2005, at 7:51 AM, Roland Dreier wrote:
Tom> Do we need backward compatibility?
Hal> I'm not sure but I think this was a recommendation from
Hal> Roland.
Yes, of course we need backward compatibility. We can't put a change
into the kernel that breaks userspace binaries.
For example, the old Fedora binary of arping has to continue to work,
even if you use a new kernel.
But, Fedora will rebuild their binary once this change is in. If the
Linux developers cared about this sort of thing, it would version all
its kernel structs and put padding at the end to ensure new fields
could be added. It has opted for the cleaner (technical) solution of
having all the apps recompile. Sure there will be a little bit of
growing pain, but in the end, it won't have all kinds of backwards
compatibility cruft lying around.
-tduffy
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