abidw for non-exported structures

[Ketan Patil <ketanp@nvidia.com>]

Hi,

I was experimenting with abidw and abidiff tools to check ABI changes in linux kernel.
I had performed few experiments:

  1.  Changing exported structures:
     *   I changed few structures (added some dummy members in between) which were exported and build the kernel and created abi xml file using abidw tool.
     *   Then I compared this xml with the baseline xml (kernel without any changes) using abidiff tool and I found that it catches this ABI change.
  2.  Changing non-exported structures:
     *   I changed few non-exported structures e.g. struct dm_ioctl In https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/stable/linux.git/tree/include/uapi/linux/dm-ioctl.h?h=v5.10.18
     *   This struct is being used by a number of ioctls. So I think, changing this struct should be flagged as an ABI change.
     *   Then I build the kernel and created the new abi xml file using abidw tool and compared with baseline xml using abidiff tool.
     *   abidiff tool is not able to catch this. Also, I don't see any entry for dm_ioctl in the xml generated using abidw.


Does it mean that, abidw tool does not work for the non exported symbols? If yes, are you planning to add this feature?
Can you please let me know or redirect?

Thanks,
Ketan Patil