Abstract: The lack of effective theoretical guidance for the migration of device driver modules and application system libraries caused by kernel upgrades brings many inconveniences to the development and deployment of operating systems. In response to the above situation, this paper proposes a quantitative analysis method for kernel compatibility based on kernel module difference detection and dependency analysis. Combining with the open-source Linux kernel, it constructs a kernel module dependency graph, statistics graph features that affect kernel compatibility such as indegree, out-degree, dependency depth, and centrality of kernel modules, analyzes the changes in system calls and exported functions, which are two types of functions strongly related to compatibility, and their impact on kernel compatibility. It also provides a basic method to measure the compatibility rate and influence domain of kernel modules, and experimental verification is conducted in the Linux kernel 5.x series and typical versions of Kylin.

Key words: kernel, compatibility quantification, domain of impact