Jan Engelhardt wrote: > I do not think we planned for a stable API - but feel free to ask Jamal. > The main target was ABI, because... - I am not sure how m_ipt did it, > but I seem to remember that despite version checks (ie. struct > xtables_match->version) it provided an iptables-like API that was not > actually that from the respective iptables version. Or something. Well, IMO if this is intended to be a public API it should be stable. > I am not sure what m_ipt did previously w.r.t. checks, but there are now > various mechanisms in place to ensure ABIs do not get mixed up > erroneously: > > - soversion. m_ipt now links against, say, libxtables.so.2. If the > latter changes incompatibly, it becomes libxtables.so.3, and the > runtime linker ld.so will take care of it -- by throwing a "file not > found" error, or by actually loading a still-existing .so.2. > > - libxtables will not load extensions that have a mismatching soversion > string > > - lastly, we could make it so that every extension is backlinked to > libxtables.so.$version as an added measure but I had not yet given > thought of the impact that it causes for running iptables directly from > the source directory. Aware of all of those, but I think that we should not abuse these because versioning is not a solution, it's more like a workaround. If we change the ABI over and over again, this will result in binary breakages and really bad experience from the user side. -- "Los honestos son inadaptados sociales" -- Les Luthiers -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe netfilter-devel" in the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
