Upcoming ABI Breakage in RELENG_7

[David Southwell]

On Wednesday 30 July 2008 04:26:33 Heiko Wundram wrote:
> Am Mittwoch, 30. Juli 2008 13:03:34 schrieb Ronald Klop:
> > I think in this case (the ABI breakage) it is more nice to say: "If you
> > don't know what to do, you wil probably not see any problem because of
> > this."
> > The edge case of what can go wrong is so small, that you must be doing
> > quite specialized stuff to see breakage. In that case you would
> > understand what is going on. (IMHO)
>
> Err, no.
>
> As someone else has already noted, a prominent KLM that's distributed
> separately from the kernel which uses the vnode structure extensively
> (which I didn't think of at all until I read the respective mail) is fuse.
> A pre-upgrade compiled fuse is most certainly going to break because of
> this change. Some people have dual installations of Windows/FreeBSD (at
> least I'd presume that's the case with the fiddlers like me that track
> -STABLE as a hobby, not as a developer, or those developers who program for
> Windows as a day-job, also like me) who use ntfs-3g to mount their
> NTFS-data;
> additionally, I also extensively use ssh-fs, which is also fuse-based, and
> I guess there are also others who use it, and so the reach of this
> ABI-change, at least IMHO, is much larger than the original message makes
> you believe.
>
> Now, after the update, a lot can go wrong, because the fuse KLM is loaded
> by an init-script, and your system is most probably going to Oops while
> booting if you didn't think of disabling the fuse init-script before you
> update your kernel, and will NOT fail "gracefully". If the respective
> person doesn't know how he/she should boot to single-user-mode, update
> rc.conf to disable this, reboot, rebuild the module to get the system back
> up, the only thing I can possibly say is: "don't track stable."
>
> It might've sounded a bit harsh what I wrote, but tracking -STABLE means
> knowing your system enough so that you know how to fix things if they come
> back to bite you (especially after getting a HEADS UP). And that doesn't
> seem to be the case here if the respective person asks for SPECIFIC
> instructions what to do.
>
> So, again: DON'T track -STABLE if you can't fix the system if it breaks,
> and AFAICT this change is most certainly going to break quite a few
> systems.

Hey

I want to thank those that have taken the trouble to explain stuff BUT

I also feel the need to object to "If you cant then don't" kind of mentality. 
Everyone has to start somewhere!!!

A contribution that sounds a bit like saying:

"Well if you do not have the experience on tracking stable then do not bother 
to start"
OR
"If you do not understand my jargon why should it be explained"

seems to me to invite a  gentle reproof

David