kmod 5

[thirdparty/kmod.git] / NEWS

kmod 5
======

- Break libkmod's API to insert a module like modprobe does. It now accepts
  extra an extra argument to print its action and acceptable flags were
  sanitized.

- Share more code between modprobe and libkmod: using the new version of
  kmod_module_probe_insert_module() it's possible to share a great amount of
  code between modprobe and libkmod

- modprobe no longer works with paths: it only accepts module names and/or
  aliases now.

- testsuite was added to repository, allowing automated tests to be run and
  easing the way bugs are reproduced.

- modprobe: when dumping configuration ('-c' option) separate config
  and indexes by adding a commented line between them.

- Fix bugs wrt normalizing aliases and module names

- Fix bug wrt inserting an alias that resolves to multiple modules: we should
  not stop on the first error, but rather continue to try loading other
  modules.

- Fix unaligned memory access in hash function, causing depmod to output wrong
  information in ARMv5

- Fix man page build and install: now they are only installed if tools are
  enabled

kmod 4
======

- New APIs in libkmod to:
	- Get configuration lists: blacklists, install commands, remove
	  commands, aliases, options and softdeps
	- Dump indexes

- Several bugs fixed in libkmod, modprobe, depmod and modinfo

- API documentation: if configure with run with --enable-gtk-doc, the API doc
  will be generated by make. Gtk-doc is required for that.

- Man pages are built, which replace man pages from module-init-tools

- 'include' and 'config' options in *.conf files were deprecated

- configure is not run by autogen.sh. Instead, a common set of options is
  printed. If you are hacking on kmod, consider using bootstrap-configure
  script.

- 'modprobe -c' works as expected now. As opposed to module-init-tools, it
  dumps the parsed configuration, not only the file contents.

kmod 3
======

- New APIs in libkmod to:
	- Get symbols from module, parsing the ELF section
	- Get dependency symbols
	- Check if resources are still valid or if libkmod must be reloaded
	- Insert module like modprobe, checking (soft-)dependencies, commands,
	  blacklist. It can run commands by itself and to call a callback
	  function.

- Support to load modules compressed with xz

- Tools are now bundled together in a single tool called kmod. It can be
  called using symlinks with the same names as tools from module-init-tools.
  E.g: /usr/bin/lsmod -> /usr/bin/kmod. With this we are aiming to complete a
  1:1 replacement of module-init-tools.

- The only missing tool, depmod, was added to kmod together with the necessary
  APIs in libkmod.

- If a program using libkmod runs for a long time, as for example udev, it must
  check if it doesn't have to re-load libkmod. A new helper function was added
  in libkmod to check if context is still valid and udev is already using it.

- An 'unaligned access' bug was fixed. So those architecture that does not
  handle unaligned access can use kmod, too.

kmod 2
======

Some bugs fixed: the worst of them was with an infinite loop when an alias
matched more than one module.

- New APIs in libkmod to:
	- Get soft dependencies
	- Get info from module files parsing ELF
	- Get modversions from files parsing ELF

- Support to load gzipped kernel modules: kmod can be compiled with support to
  gzipped modules by giving the --enable-zlib flag

- Support to forcefully load modules, both vermagic and modversion

- Support to force and nowait removal flags

- Configuration files are parsed in the same order as modprobe: files are
  sorted alphabetically (independently of their dir) and files with the same
  name obey a precedence order

- New tool: kmod-modinfo

- kmod-modprobe gained several features to be a 1:1 replacement for modprobe.
  The only missing things are the options '--showconfig' and '-t / -l'. These
  last ones have been deprecated long ago and they will be removed from
  modprobe. A lot of effort has been put on kmod-modprobe to ensure it
  maintains compabitility with modprobe.

- linux-modules@vger.kernel.org became the official mailing list for kmod

kmod 1
======

First version of kmod and its library, libkmod.

In the libkmod it's currently possible to:
	- List modules currently loaded
	- Get information about loaded modules such as initstate, refcount,
	  holders, sections, address and size
	- Lookup modules by alias, module name or path
	- Insert modules: options from configuration and extra options can be
	  passed, but flags are not implemented, yet
	- Remove modules
	- Filter list of modules using blacklist
	- For each module, get the its list of options and install/remove
	  commands
	- Indexes can be loaded on startup to speedup lookups later

Tools provided with the same set of options as in module-init-tools:
	- kmod-lsmod
	- kmod-insmod
	- kmod-rmmod
	- kmod-modprobe, with some functionality still missing (use of softdep,
	  dump configuration, show modversions)