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> Android device vendors don't care because either way they will stop updating their kernels after a number of years This one seems like a big problem to me. M

> Android device vendors don't care because either way they will stop updating their kernels after a number of years This one seems like a big problem to me. Maybe the handset manufacturer doesn’t care because they already made their profit, but this pushes the support burden onto app developers (including Google itself) who have to maintain support for these old Android devices that the manufacturers don’t care about. This seems like a real issue to me, is there something I’m missing?

cycloptic 6y ago
I agree that is a real issue. By my point is that the proposed solution is now that Google itself is now going to have to maintain support for old Fuschia devices because the burden is now on them to maintain this stable ABI. How is this going to solve anything compared to just making a support promise about a particular Linux version? Nothing here seems like it would improve for the app developers.
- tbodt 6y ago
  *Fuchsia
  - quicklime 6y ago
    It's ok, nobody can spell fuchsia: https://blog.xkcd.com/2010/05/03/color-survey-results/ https://blog.xkcd.com/2010/05/03/color-survey-results/ Back on topic though, I think it's just easier from an engineering perspective to maintain a stable ABI than it is to maintain a set of blessed kernel versions. An ABI is something that can be reasonably well-defined and has a clear scope, whereas if you just say that you support kernel versions X, Y and Z, then who knows what weird undocumented behavior you'll need to maintain.
m4rtink 6y ago
There is an effort to upstream all the Android kernel patches to make Android device kernel updates simple: https://lwn.net/Articles/771974/ https://lwn.net/Articles/771974/ Also some vendors such as Sony have standardized kerbel versions across many devices & publish kernel major version updates for a range of devices (in Sonys case called the open device program).

cycloptic 6y ago

I agree that is a real issue. By my point is that the proposed solution is now that Google itself is now going to have to maintain support for old Fuschia devices because the burden is now on them to maintain this stable ABI. How is this going to solve anything compared to just making a support promise about a particular Linux version? Nothing here seems like it would improve for the app developers.

tbodt 6y ago
*Fuchsia
- quicklime 6y ago
  It's ok, nobody can spell fuchsia: https://blog.xkcd.com/2010/05/03/color-survey-results/ https://blog.xkcd.com/2010/05/03/color-survey-results/ Back on topic though, I think it's just easier from an engineering perspective to maintain a stable ABI than it is to maintain a set of blessed kernel versions. An ABI is something that can be reasonably well-defined and has a clear scope, whereas if you just say that you support kernel versions X, Y and Z, then who knows what weird undocumented behavior you'll need to maintain.

m4rtink 6y ago

There is an effort to upstream all the Android kernel patches to make Android device kernel updates simple: https://lwn.net/Articles/771974/ https://lwn.net/Articles/771974/ Also some vendors such as Sony have standardized kerbel versions across many devices & publish kernel major version updates for a range of devices (in Sonys case called the open device program).