On Fri, Jul 15, 2005 at 05:18:06PM -0700, Bob Palowoda wrote:

>   So it would be an advantage to OpenSolaris developers to have a list
> of such private interfaces as not to consider developing any software
> that has a dependency.   Or maybe the definition isn't clear.  Example

Yes, it would be nice.  This is one of those projects that everyone
always mentions but no one has ever funded: an interface database.

However, a rule of thumb is that documented interfaces (those with man
pages) are public, and others are not.

> the 'pcic' module is a private interface.  Wait is it a private interface or
> is it something that will be open source?   Which interfaces that are 
> private now will become open source?   Which ones have the posiblity
> of being removed?  A simple list might be helpful.

Private and open source are orthogonal.  There are many private
interfaces whose implementations are already open source.  There are
plenty of public interfaces whose implementations are not.

Also, in some cases it may be acceptable to use private interfaces
within ON (other applications should not use them).  In fact, in some
cases it is unavoidable - the public interfaces to the kernel are libc
routines, so obviously libc is using private interfaces to implement
them.  There's an effort under way to update the taxonomy, but you can
read about the current classifications in chapter 7 of the developer's
reference.

-- 
Keith M Wesolowski              "Sir, we're surrounded!" 
Solaris Kernel Team             "Excellent; we can attack in any direction!" 
_______________________________________________
opensolaris-discuss mailing list
[email protected]

Reply via email to