Q: minimum supported Linux UAPI headers version

[Eugene Syromyatnikov]

On Mon, Mar 2, 2020 at 9:15 PM Eugene Syromiatnikov <esyr at redhat.com> wrote:
>
> Hello.
>
> As of now, README has several statements regarding the recommended/required
> Linux kernel versions, with the "required" being 2.5.46 and "recommended"
> being 2.6.18.  In fact, there are two separate requirements (among others):
> kernel headers version for building strace and kernel version for running it.
> And while running strace on 2.6.18 and older kernels is pretty much possible,
> it seems that build against some 2.6.18 kernel headers (RHEL 5) is already
> sort of broken.  And taking into account the  fact that RHEL 5 will be even
> more dead later this year (end of ELS), I'm not sure if it makes sense
> to claim that this kind of build environment is supported.  So, I'd like
> to propose adding a separate statement regarding minimum kernel headers
> version requirement, and my question is: what is the sensible minimum
> to set? In other words, what is the oldest kernel headers version people
> use for buiding actual versions of strace?
>
> Personally, I still build strace against 2.6.32 kernel headers
> (RHEL 6-flavoured), but I suspect that my experience is pretty limited
> in that regard and is far from definitive.

On a related question, commit[1] raises kernel version requirement on
ppc64 and x86_64 quite significantly; are there users that use recent
strace on, let's say, RHEL 5-based kernels?

[1] https://github.com/strace/strace/commit/fa82fca19b19a110cd4efc4f6e89d61ba50e6d28

-- 
Eugene Syromyatnikov
mailto:evgsyr at gmail.com
xmpp:esyr at jabber.{ru|org}