Commit ee2f51dc authored Nov 12, 2013 by Josh Triplett Committed by Linus Torvalds Nov 13, 2013

Documentation/ABI: document the non-ABI status of Kconfig and symbols



Discussion at Kernel Summit made it clear that the presence or absence of
specific Kconfig symbols are not considered ABI, and that no userspace (or
bootloader, etc) should rely on them.

In addition, kernel-internal symbols are well established as non-ABI, per
Documentation/stable_api_nonsense.txt.

Document both of these in Documentation/ABI/README, in a new section for
notable bits of non-ABI.

Signed-off-by: Josh Triplett <josh@joshtriplett.org>
Cc: Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>
Cc: Tao Ma <boyu.mt@taobao.com>
Cc: Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@linuxfoundation.org>
Acked-by: H. Peter Anvin <hpa@zytor.com>
Cc: Richard Weinberger <richard.weinberger@gmail.com>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>

parent e946c43a

Documentation/ABI/README

+13 −0

Original line number	Diff line number	Diff line
		@@ -72,3 +72,16 @@ kernel tree without going through the obsolete state first.

		It's up to the developer to place their interfaces in the category they
		wish for it to start out in.


		Notable bits of non-ABI, which should not under any circumstances be considered
		stable:

		- Kconfig. Userspace should not rely on the presence or absence of any
		particular Kconfig symbol, in /proc/config.gz, in the copy of .config
		commonly installed to /boot, or in any invocation of the kernel build
		process.

		- Kernel-internal symbols. Do not rely on the presence, absence, location, or
		type of any kernel symbol, either in System.map files or the kernel binary
		itself. See Documentation/stable_api_nonsense.txt.