Analyzing changes to the binary interface exposed by the Kernel to its modules

Operating system distributors often face challenges that are somewhat different from that of upstream kernel developers. For instance, some kernel updates often need to stay at least binary compatible with modules that might be “out of tree” for some time.

In that context, being able to automatically detect and analyze changes to the binary interface exposed by the kernel to its module does have some noticeable value.

The Libabigail framework is capable of analyzing ELF binaries along with their accompanying debug info in the DWARF format, detect and report changes in types, functions, variables and ELF symbols. It has historically supported that for user space shared libraries and application so we worked to make it understand the Linux kernel
binaries.

In this presentation, we are going to present the current support of ABI analysis for Linux Kernel binaries, the challenges we face, how we address them and the plans we have for the future.