Re: [Discuss-gnuradio] X300 PCIe issues

[Sylvain Munaut]

Hi,


> So, would we accept an applications-layer API that changed roughly every two
> months?  I would argue, no, we wouldn't.  But
>   people developing in kernel land seem to accept it as some kind of
> necessary gospel.

For the kernel, the "application layer API" is the user space
interface and that's _very_ stable.

The module API is more akin to something internal. AFAIK The general
design and philosophy is that the goal of every kernel module should
be to get merged upstream. Long term maintenance of an out-of-tree
driver is _not_ a supported / recommended use case, so they just don't
care about it. It might work, but if you go that way, you have to deal
with it.


> I reject that notion.

Feel free to fork the kernel and do all the same enhancement and new
stuff that comes with each kernel version with no changes whatsoever
to the internal APIs and without any additional work.

Maintaining stuff stable is kind of the model they had with the
2.0/2.2/2.4 series, where the large changes were only in the
inter-series. But for 2.6 (and 3.0 which is really just 2.6
continuation, nothing major changed between 2.6.39 and 3.0, Linus just
felt '40' was too high), they changed the development model to be more
fluid and allow faster evolution and AFAIH, most people are pleased
with the results, both kernel dev that can get their stuff merged
faster and more predictably and the users that get new stuff earlier.


> Just because kernel-land is where "all the kewl kids play" is not a good 
> reason to break things on a regular basis.

They don't break it for the pleasure of breaking it. They break it
when it technically makes sense to do so.


Cheers,

   Sylvain