On Wed, 13 Nov 2024, Thorsten Glaser wrote:
But, as has been pointed out, if we make the current alignment explicit everywhere, the kernel ABI does not have to change¹. And new syscalls, ioctls, structs, etc. can just be made with natural alignment in mind (I bet most are already anyway) and with padding assumptions made expli‐ cit (which again probably is done already anyway).
Yes, upstream developers can be expected accept patches that make explicit the alignment of struct members. That's what I've been saying for years. Luckily, that doesn't require a new ABI. It does require volunteers who are willing to write and submit patches for those packages that matter to users. And that is the real problem: the manpower shortage. The only solution I proposed for that problem was better collaboration and better allocation of resources. But his straight-forward request for assistance was an excellent idea of Adrian's: https://lists.debian.org/debian-68k/2024/11/msg00007.html
