Generic Kernel API
Robert Watson
rwatson at FreeBSD.org
Wed Nov 9 04:20:16 PST 2005
On Wed, 9 Nov 2005, Marcin Jessa wrote:
> Sure, but the point is to use native FreeBSD drivers, even if they were
> in closed source binary form and not drivers written for an entirely
> different O.S.
I think there is general agreement that it would be nice to be able to
offer both relatively static APIs and ABIs to device driver writers
writing device drivers for FreeBSD. However, with the massive changes in
kernel architecture over the last 4-5 years as part of SMPng and the
threading work, that simply hasn't been possible. We do attempt to keep
the API and ABI for device drivers relatively stable over the lifetime of
a major release (i.e., 4.*, 5.*, 6.*) but even that runs into occasional
problems. My hope is that in the next year or so, things will settle down
significantly as we begin to flush the last of the non-MPSAFE drivers from
the system, and reach a point where all device drivers can use consistent
synchronization. Among other things, we have an item scheduled for the
FreeBSD developer summit at EuroBSDCon to nail down parts of the network
device driver API for this purpose. I.e., there is interest in what has
been proposed, but we're not quite at a point where we can nail down the
API in a more permanent way.
Robert N M Watson
More information about the freebsd-current
mailing list