Going through my usual scanning of all the “-next” Git subsystem branches of new code set to be introduced for the next Linux kernel merge window, a very notable addition was just queued up… Linux 6.10 is set to merge the NTSYNC driver for emulating the Microsoft Windows NT synchronization primitives within the kernel for allowing better performance with Valve’s Steam Play (Proton) and Wine of Windows games and other apps on Linux.
I was wondering if this can be used outside of Windows context.
Edit: I’m asking specifically for Linux context.
Please don’t
Why not? Would you rather that we have a Windows-exclusive subsystem in our kernel?
Kernel devs then would want to make it stable API. I don’t want Windows API being stable part of kernel.
It mostly implements racy stuff like pulsing event.
There is already known subsystem that does not have stable API because it is used by only one project - DRI.
Backwards compatibility is important
How does that have to do with the sync primitive?
Since it’s a new feature, would it not cause incompatibility for any kernel versions before it was added?