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> Ublk has a lot of interesting potential, but the current use cases for it are not entirely clear. I wonder how long it'll be before someone merges a cleaner
by Sirened 4y ago
> Ublk has a lot of interesting potential, but the current use cases for it are not entirely clear.
I wonder how long it'll be before someone merges a cleaner set of APIs for user space drivers to go with this. Android has already built out their own parallel feature for this though I don't think it'd fly for the rest of the kernel given how closely integrated it is. Neat nonetheless :)
- pjmlp 4y agoAndroid nowadays is a kind of pseudo-microkernel, as since Android 8 all new drivers are required to be Treble based, and they call "legacy" to classical Linux kernel drivers.
- xani_ 4y agoI think they resist that mainly because it makes it easier for companies that don't want to upstream their drivers, and nobody else. Currently, if there is say a better, more efficient way to do some common task ,say storage drivers, do, you can just go in and refactor all of that. With common interface, you're doomed. You might implement the better way and give it in API, but you can't force anyone to use it, and you can't deprecate the old one. You also have to keep the old behaviour *forever*, even for things that "do not break userspace" so it's even bigger maintenance burden. And what if your API is wrong ? Still gotta keep it... and someone might still use it and trip on the wrongness
- teddyh 4y agoThis point is explained at length here: https://www.kernel.org/doc/html/latest/process/stable-api-nonsense.html https://www.kernel.org/doc/html/latest/process/stable-api-no...