Dennis wrote:
> >: Still, I personally believe, that "core" or general "freebsd community"
> >: should explicitly state, that support for binary drivers and support
for
> >: easier inclusion of binary driver or just third party driver is eagerly
> >: encouraged. And as much as possible, easy inclusion of binary drivers
> >: sould be kept in mind whether makeing changes to /usr/src/Makefile or
> >: kernel interfaces or even discussions on the freebsd lists.
> >
> >Core has stated in the past a strong desire for developers not to
> >break kernel interfaces within minor releases.
>
>
> 4.1 broke that "policy" rather badly. Perhaps its time to get rid of the
> mbuf macros, as any change to that structure breaks binary compatibility
in
> the worst way possible.
>
> DB
The "problem" was not with the macros themselves, but with the fact that
your outdated binary was compiled with old definitions of some structures
which were later changed (mbstat structure). The changes that happened
there were relatively minor. I'm sure you would know all this had you
debugged the problem yourself, but it turns out that all you provided in
terms of "support" was whining and directing blame at the FreeBSD team.
I disagree with not merging in fixes to -STABLE that help maintain code
in general, for the entire project; In this case, the change helped
userland code
such as netstat(1) deal with mbtypes. This wasn't a "big interface change"
by
any means. Plus, it was discussed on -net and since -net directly concerns
you
and your driver, perhaps you should read it every once in a while. Had we
not
merged this change to -STABLE, I'm sure we would have had just as many, if
not more requests: "MFC MFC, you guys are ignoring -STABLE!" as we
have now with you complaining about the change being made. A wise man
once said something along the lines: "you can never win with tire-kickers,"
and now I see how he was right.
Regards,
Bosko.
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