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@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> --- Documentation/ABI/README | 13 +++++++++++++ 1 file changed, 13 insertions(+) diff --git a/Documentation/ABI/README b/Documentation/ABI/README index 1006982..1fafc4b 100644 --- a/Documentation/ABI/README +++ b/Documentation/ABI/README @@ -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. -- 1.8.4.rc3 -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-doc" in the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
