Each of those three major components is assigned a version number which is a three-part number separated by periods. The left most number is called the major version number. The middle number is the minor version number and the right most number is the update version. Component versions are considered compatible if their major and minor version numbers match.

Future releases will increment the minor version number for changes that have incompatibilities between files in the new release and ones in the previous release. The major version number will be incremented if there are substantial changes in the way the library or driver operate which will require significant changes in application code. The update fields will be incremented for changes that do not result in incompatibilities.

Version checking is performed by the pciopen and pci_open_chan functions. The default behavior of those functions is to fail if a version mismatch is detected - i.e. if the major or minor version numbers of all three components do not match.

The default behavior can be overridden with the new pci_version_checking library function. The function has the prototype:

    int
    pci_version_checking (
        int board_number,
        int require_match,
        int report_mismatch );

The board_number parameter specifies which DPT4 board to apply the version checking behavior to. Valid values for this parameter are in the range of -1 to PCI_MAX_BOARD - 1 (the value of PCI_MAX_BOARD is defined in the dputil.h header file). Passing a value of -1 will apply the behavior to all DPT4 boards.

A value of zero for the require_match parameter will change the behavior of pciopen and pci_open_chan to succeed even if versions do not match. This parameter is applied to all DPT4 boards regardless of the value of board_number.

Disabling the version match requirement may be useful in the event that changes are known to not cause a problem for a given application and it is inconvenient to flash up the DPT4 boards or install an updated device driver but new applications need to be run which are built with a new library.

The report_mismatch parameter controls printing of warning messages from the open functions. By default a warning is issued to the stderr output once for each board having a version mismatch. A warning will be issued regardless of the setting of the require_match parameter. Passing a value of 0 for this parameter disables the warning message.

The utility programs supplied with this release call pci_version_checking with require_match set to 0 and report_mismatch set to 1. This allows the programs to operate even if versions do not match but mismatches are reported.

These drivers can be installed without having to be compiled on the target system provided the target system matches the pre-built driver architecture and operating system version. The pre-built drivers in this release are:

pcie1drv_sparc64	built for Solaris 2.7, Sparc (sun4u) architecture, 64-bit kernel
pcie1drv_sparc32	built for Solaris 2.7, Sparc (sun4u) architecture, 32-bit kernel
pcie1drv_intel32	built for Solaris 2.8, Intel architecture, 32-bit kernel

Pre-built drivers may work for systems of the same kernel address space but a different version of Solaris or architecture. However, CAC has not tested it in that environment. If you require a pre-built driver for a different combination of architecture and operating system version contact CAC.