At the same time, the major ABI version is changed atomically across all
libraries by incrementing the major version in the ABI_VERSION file. This is
-done globally for all libraries that declare a stable ABI. For libraries marked
-as EXPERIMENTAL, their major ABI version is always set to 0.
+done globally for all libraries.
Minor ABI versions
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
* ``VERSION_SYMBOL_EXPERIMENTAL(b, e)``: Creates a symbol version table entry
binding versioned symbol ``b@EXPERIMENTAL`` to the internal function ``be``.
The macro is used when a symbol matures to become part of the stable ABI, to
- provide an alias to experimental for some time.
+ provide an alias to experimental until the next major ABI version.
.. _example_abi_macro_usage:
In situations in which an ``experimental`` symbol has been stable for some time,
and it becomes a candidate for promotion to the stable ABI. At this time, when
-promoting the symbol, maintainer may choose to provide an alias to the
+promoting the symbol, the maintainer may choose to provide an alias to the
``experimental`` symbol version, so as not to break consuming applications.
+This alias is then dropped in the next major ABI version.
The process to provide an alias to ``experimental`` is similar to that, of
:ref:`symbol versioning <example_abi_macro_usage>` described above.
-BIND_DEFAULT_SYMBOL(rte_acl_create, _v20, 20);
+BIND_DEFAULT_SYMBOL(rte_acl_create, _v21, 21);
-Lastly, any VERSION_SYMBOL macros that point to the old version node should be
-removed, taking care to keep, where need old code in place to support newer
-versions of the symbol.
+Lastly, any VERSION_SYMBOL macros that point to the old version nodes
+should be removed, taking care to preserve any code that is shared
+with the new version node.
Running the ABI Validator