What I've been missing a lot in the official documentation is the exact distribution-agnostic features and version ranges required for the drivers to work. I'll start collecting this information here, and will be happy about every contribution... Please do not list any distribution-specific version numbers here (such as e.g. Fedora's 2.6.27.19-170.2.35.fc10.x86_64), but only upstream, "vanilla" version numbering. If possible, please document which feature exactly is required and why it went away at some point. Documenting old NI driver versions makes no sense from a practical point of view, so please stick to the newest releases.
NI-KAL 1.10
- Kernel version <= 2.6.28
Needs to link to the kernel symbol init_mm. This symbol is only exported with CONFIG_UNUSED_SYMBOLS set from 2.6.25 on and not exported at all from 2.6.29 on.
Will be fixed in the next NI-KAL version.
NI-VISA 4.5
- PCI/PXI Passport: NI-KAL
If you are developing a PCI or PXI device driver with NI-VISA it requires a kernel driver that uses NI-KAL APIs - GPIB Passport: NI-488.2
If you are using NI-VISA to communicate over the GPIB bus it requires NI-488.2
NI-488.2 2.5
- NI-KAL
All device drivers are currently kernel drivers and use NI-KAL APIs. - USB devices: Kernel version < 2.6.25
The kernel APIs for USB device drivers became GPL only in 2.6.25
