Semantic Patches Documenting and Automating Collateral Evolutions in Linux Device Drivers

Device drivers form the glue code between an operating system and its devices. In Linux, device drivers are highly reliant for this on the various Linux internal libraries, which encapsulate generic functionalities related to the various busses and device types. In recent years, these libraries have been evolving rapidly, to address new requirements and improve performance. In response to each evolution, collateral evolutions are often required in driver code, to bring the drivers up to date with the new library API. Currently, collateral evolutions are mostly done manually. The large number of drivers, however, implies that this approach is time-consuming and unreliable, leading to subtle errors when modifications are not done consistently.