site_archiver@lists.apple.com Delivered-To: darwin-kernel@lists.apple.com <http://developer.apple.com/mac/library/qa/qa2007/qa1575.html> <http://developer.apple.com/mac/library/documentation/Darwin/Conceptual/KEXTConcept/KEXTConceptDependencies/kext_dependencies.html> S+E -- Quinn "The Eskimo!" <http://www.apple.com/developer/> Apple Developer Relations, Developer Technical Support, Core OS/Hardware At 17:47 +0530 1/10/09, mominabrar wrote: This is interesting. We got back the namei() and family of functions in the new kernel ( <http://www.opensource.apple.com/source/xnu/xnu-1456.1.26/>xnu-1456.1.26 ). You seem to be missing a key point about the Mac OS X kernel architecture, namely that there's a strict separation between how the kernel is implemented and the kernel programming interfaces (KPIs) that we expose to third party developers. In this case, namei is in the kernel, has always been in the kernel, and probably always will be. However, namei is not a KPI. Thus, third party kernel developers are not allowed to link with it [1] because it's not an interface that we plan to support (that is, maintain both source and binary compatibility) in the long term. To reinforce that point, we've been steadily removing non-KPI declarations from our headers. There is a relatively simple way you can check whether a function is a supported KPI. See QA1575 "Supported KPIs" for details. For more background on this stuff, see the "Kernel Extension Dependencies" section of "Kernel Extension Programming Topics". [1] For experimental purposes you can access these routines by linking with the whole kernel. However, that's not something we recommend and, given recent development in the headers, that's becoming increasingly painful; you can make the linker happy relatively easily but assembling a reasonable set of headers to make the compiler happy is tricky. _______________________________________________ Do not post admin requests to the list. They will be ignored. Darwin-kernel mailing list (Darwin-kernel@lists.apple.com) Help/Unsubscribe/Update your Subscription: http://lists.apple.com/mailman/options/darwin-kernel/site_archiver%40lists.a... This email sent to site_archiver@lists.apple.com