[OpenAFS-devel] afsd & libafs module version checking??

[Jeffrey Hutzelman]

On Wednesday, December 14, 2005 03:21:36 PM -0600 Troy Benjegerdes 
<hozer@hozed.org> wrote:

> On Wed, Dec 14, 2005 at 12:31:00PM -0500, Jeffrey Hutzelman wrote:
>>
>>
>> On Wednesday, December 14, 2005 09:04:57 AM -0500 Tom Keiser
>> <tkeiser@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> > Basing this on cml_version_number has a few disadvantages:
>> >
>> > (1)compile date becomes part of the decision
>> > (2)autoconf flags cannot change syscall and ioctl interface behavior
>> > (3)it's overly brittle; the kernel interfaces shouldn't be assumed to
>> > change between every minor revision
>> > (4)because of the packaging issues Russ brought up, we would end up
>> > sending spurious warnings to users (who would probably send in
>> > unnecessary bug reports)
>>
>> Indeed, this is not what the CML version number is for, and overloading
>> it  for that purpose is a bad idea.  I've had too many bad experiences
>> with  software that breaks because it insists on exact matching of
>> software  version numbers instead of using interface versions.
>
> How about we just dump the CML version as informative info. I have a
> patch available here:
>
> http://source.scl.ameslab.gov/hg/openafs-misc-fixes?cmd=changeset;node=df
> 929d0767ee2d295c4b0c3139a0aebd9dc37fae

That sounds useful, except getting the version string ought to be an 
unprivileged pioctl, so anyone can do it, and so arla can support it.  You 
can use _CVICEIOCTL(4) for this, if you send mail to registrar@central.org 
saying what you're calling it and what it does.

-- Jeff