There's two ways of dealing with ioctls which are present on only newer
kernels:
(a) at runtime, deal with the error that occurs when you try to run a
missing ioctl,
(b) at compile time (or design time) leave out support for such ioctls.
Most of the time (a) is a superior approach (if the ioctl had any value
at all), however (b) has a rather elegant simplicity.
Probably the best approach to (b), though, is documentation which
includes for each ioctl a bit of its history (when it first appeared,
historically similar mechanisms).
Also, remember that even if you're not doing any development, and are
compiling programs only for your personal machine, you may eventually
upgrade your kernel.
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