Re: modutils, the next generation

Dale R. Worley (worley@ariadne.com)
Tue, 14 Jan 1997 09:29:35 -0500


In article <9701141042.ZM8090@cellar.rz.uni-ulm.de> Martin Buck <Martin-2.Buck@student.uni-ulm.de> writes:
On Jan 13, 15:16, Greg Alexander wrote:
> There isn't really anything all that special about them. [...]
> So far as anyone really cares, they're .o's. :)

Of course they're .o's, but being able to load them into a running Linux
kernel seems to be a very special property, IMHO.

I think the crux of the matter is that one really does care that only
proper modules get loaded into the kernel -- the result of loading a
.o that *wasn't* a module would be ugly indeed. Better would be if
modules were fully version-locked in some way, so that there was a
high probability that if a module was incompatible with a particular
kernel, it would not load at all. And, ideally, if the kernel were
changed but still compatible with a particular module, the module
could be loaded unchanged. (Unfortunately, I don't understand the
module system well enough to know to what degree MODVERSIONS takes
care of this.)

Dale

--
Dale R. Worley					Ariadne Internet Services
Voice: +1 617-899-7949   Fax: +1 617-899-7946	E-mail: worley@ariadne.com
"Internet-based electronic commerce solutions to real business problems."