Since the notion of versions was introduced for bpftool, it has been following the version number of the kernel (using the version number corresponding to the tree in which bpftool's sources are located). The rationale was that bpftool's features are loosely tied to BPF features in the kernel, and that we could defer versioning to the kernel repository itself. But this versioning scheme is confusing today, because a bpftool binary should be able to work with both older and newer kernels, even if some of its recent features won't be available on older systems. Furthermore, if bpftool is ported to other systems in the future, keeping a Linux-based version number is not a good option. It would make more sense to align bpftool's number on libbpf, maybe. When versioning was introduced in bpftool, libbpf was in its initial phase at v0.0.1. Now it moves faster, with regular version bumps. But there are two issues if we want to pick the same numbers. First, that would mean going backward on the numbering, and will be a huge pain for every script trying to determine which bpftool binary is the most recent (not to mention some possible overlap of the numbers in a distant future). Then, bpftool could get new features or bug fixes between two versions libbpf, so maybe we should not completely tie its versions to libbpf, either. Therefore, this commit introduces an independent versioning scheme for bpftool. The new version is v6.0.0, with its major number incremented over the current 5.16.* returned from the kernel's Makefile. The plan is to update this new number from time to time when bpftool gets new features or new bug fixes. These updates could possibly lead to new releases being tagged on the recently created out-of-tree mirror, at https://github.com/libbpf/bpftool. Version number is moved higher in the Makefile, to make it more visible. Suggested-by: Andrii Nakryiko <andrii@xxxxxxxxxx> Signed-off-by: Quentin Monnet <quentin@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> --- tools/bpf/bpftool/Makefile | 5 ++--- 1 file changed, 2 insertions(+), 3 deletions(-) diff --git a/tools/bpf/bpftool/Makefile b/tools/bpf/bpftool/Makefile index bd5a8cafac49..b7dbdea112d3 100644 --- a/tools/bpf/bpftool/Makefile +++ b/tools/bpf/bpftool/Makefile @@ -1,6 +1,8 @@ # SPDX-License-Identifier: (GPL-2.0-only OR BSD-2-Clause) include ../../scripts/Makefile.include +BPFTOOL_VERSION := 6.0.0 + ifeq ($(srctree),) srctree := $(patsubst %/,%,$(dir $(CURDIR))) srctree := $(patsubst %/,%,$(dir $(srctree))) @@ -39,9 +41,6 @@ LIBBPF_BOOTSTRAP := $(LIBBPF_BOOTSTRAP_OUTPUT)libbpf.a LIBBPF_INTERNAL_HDRS := $(addprefix $(LIBBPF_HDRS_DIR)/,hashmap.h nlattr.h) LIBBPF_BOOTSTRAP_INTERNAL_HDRS := $(addprefix $(LIBBPF_BOOTSTRAP_HDRS_DIR)/,hashmap.h) -ifeq ($(BPFTOOL_VERSION),) -BPFTOOL_VERSION := $(shell make -rR --no-print-directory -sC ../../.. kernelversion) -endif LIBBPF_VERSION := $(shell make -r --no-print-directory -sC $(BPF_DIR) libbpfversion) $(LIBBPF_OUTPUT) $(BOOTSTRAP_OUTPUT) $(LIBBPF_BOOTSTRAP_OUTPUT) $(LIBBPF_HDRS_DIR) $(LIBBPF_BOOTSTRAP_HDRS_DIR): -- 2.32.0
