Hi folks,

As the maintainer of the net/netbsd-tap package, you will often find me
bitching about kernel internal API changes, as they can still be used by
LKMs, such as the one for tap(4).

This time, the sysctl_createv is at stake.  I don't think I know any
other way than testing the kernel version in order to know whether I
should use const or not in that case.

Unless someone is kind enough to bump the kernel version, I'll settle
with testing for version 3.99.6.  A window of 10 days of breakage really
is not an issue, especially when the change does not break the ABI.

The whole issue makes me think that maybe we'd like to have two
different numbers, one for API changes and one for ABI changes.  I'd say
an ISO date would be sufficient:  it would probably be bumped rather
often, and it's not something we necessarily have to expose to userland.

Anyway, please keep LKMs in mind when you change a kernel interface :)

Comments?

Quentin Garnier.