Tech

DISCLAIMER: I'm just speculating, I haven't touched c in decades and have no idea how Linux code works.

Generic headers here could refer to headers declaring common functions whose specific implementation might differ based on CPU architecture.

That is, the .h files would declare certain functions that other parts of the code can call to do CPU related stuff, and when compiling for a certain architecture you'd use different .c files implementing said functions for that specific architecture.

Obviously, since these headers will be common to multiple specific implementations, it'd be very important to have a standard or at least a consensus in regards to which functions they should declare, what they should return, and which parameters they should take.

From Linus' quote there, I assume the Google “devs” (probably Gemini) must have included RISC-V specific stuff in the headers, which would be an extremely big no-no as it could break other implementations or the code calling these functions.