On Thu, Aug 24, 2023 at 12:29:34PM -0700, Bart Van Assche wrote:

> The GKI indeed makes changes to the core kernel harder after its API has
> been frozen. Does carrier certification really require changes to the core
> kernel?

I don't know anything about the issue Tim was facing but I've definitely
run into issues during testing which were best fixed by extending the
core, sometimes it's not a straight bug in the core (which I'd guess
should be relatively easy to get a backport for, you can probably just
go via upstream stable) but rather that this is the appropriate layer to
handle whatever the issue is.  Teach the core about a concept, then tell
the core that your device does the thing which you've discovered needs
to be handled.

Note that I've got no experience working with GKI here, but unless
things have changed a lot there's not really any phase of the process
where there isn't substantial time pressure.