On Sun 2026-05-24 20:50:33, Marcos Paulo de Souza wrote: > The current livepatch selftests are compatible with kernel 4.12, so add > a note about it for future developers willing to contribute with new > tests. > > Signed-off-by: Marcos Paulo de Souza <[email protected]> > --- > tools/testing/selftests/livepatch/README | 3 +++ > 1 file changed, 3 insertions(+) > > diff --git a/tools/testing/selftests/livepatch/README > b/tools/testing/selftests/livepatch/README > index d2035dd64a2b..293f4730b927 100644 > --- a/tools/testing/selftests/livepatch/README > +++ b/tools/testing/selftests/livepatch/README > @@ -54,3 +54,6 @@ check_result(). The latter function greps the kernel's > ring buffer for > those strings for result comparison. Other utility functions include > general module loading and livepatch loading helpers (waiting for patch > transitions, sysfs entries, etc.) > + > +All new tests and test modules MUST be compatible with kernel version 4.12 > and > +later, including current upstream kernels.
I do not have a good feeling about this. One thing is to accept fixes/workarounds for the backward compatibility. But forcing contributors to keep the compatibility might be too demanding. I might be wrong. But I think that you would need a pretty old userspace to run 4.12 kernel. And most people could not get it easily. Honestly, I though more about this effort and I am not sure how complicated it would be in the long term. I know about two pending patchsets which are breaking the backward compatibility: + Better integration of callbacks and shadow variables with the states API [1] + Introduce replace set support [2] Especially the 1st one is a pain. It is 19th patches and most of them are fixing/reworking the selftests. I think that it was the reason why nobody reviewed it yet. And it might be even worse if we wanted to make it backward compatible. [1] https://lore.kernel.org/all/[email protected]/ [2] https://lore.kernel.org/all/[email protected]/ Best Regards, Petr
