alt Hacker NewsYes, but the whole idea is to delete the runtime binary and talk to the kernel directly.
That's when you run into the Darth Vader of binary interfaces.
> I have altered the ABI. Pray I do not alter it further. -- De Raadt
Yes, but the whole idea is to delete the runtime binary and talk to the kernel directly.
That's when you run into the Darth Vader of binary interfaces.
> I have altered the ABI. Pray I do not alter it further. -- De Raadt
I am not sure having a stable kernel ABI/API is really a goal in practice or intent in all cases.
GPU drivers are a perfect example - GPUs are hellishly complex, and their interfaces are super high-level - OpenGL/Vulkan is not something that should be implemented by the driver.
I think a general practice that is followed with GPU drivers is to move as much of the complex and non-privileged stuff out of the kernel, and only keep modesetting/power management/memory and control stuff in.
That reduces massively the amount of code that needs to run in Ring 0, but in exchange, the interface between the user and kernel blobs is non-stable. Programs talk to the userspace blob and there's no guarantee of compatibility between different kernel/userspace driver versions.
This is something even Linus accepts, with the only contention that the userspace blob needs to be open source as well. They're not maintaining something in tree, that they have no way of testing without proprietary external deps.