Date:   Wed, 23 Nov 2016 12:04:36 +1100
From:   Nicholas Piggin <npiggin@...il.com>
To:     Nicolas Pitre <nicolas.pitre@...aro.org>
Cc:     Arnd Bergmann <arnd@...db.de>,
        Russell King <linux@...linux.org.uk>,
        Uwe Kleine-König <uwe@...ine-koenig.org>,
        linux-arm-kernel@...ts.infradead.org, viro@...iv.linux.org.uk,
        linux-kbuild@...r.kernel.org, linux-arch@...r.kernel.org,
        regressions@...mhuis.info, linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org
Subject: Re: [PATCH 1/2] kbuild: provide include/asm/asm-prototypes.h for
 ARM

On Tue, 22 Nov 2016 11:34:48 -0500 (EST)
Nicolas Pitre <nicolas.pitre@...aro.org> wrote:

> On Tue, 22 Nov 2016, Arnd Bergmann wrote:
> 
> > This adds an asm/asm-prototypes.h header for ARM to fix the broken symbol
> > versioning for symbols exported from assembler files.
> > 
> > I couldn't find the correct prototypes for the compiler builtins,
> > so I went with the fake 'void f(void)' prototypes that we had
> > before, restoring the state before they were moved.
> > 
> > Originally I assumed that the problem was just a harmless warning
> > in unusual configurations, but as Uwe found, we actually need this
> > to load most modules when symbol versioning is enabled, as it is
> > in many distro kernels.
> > 
> > Cc: Uwe Kleine-König <uwe@...ine-koenig.org>
> > Fixes: 4dd1837d7589 ("arm: move exports to definitions")
> > Signed-off-by: Arnd Bergmann <arnd@...db.de>
> > ---
> > Compared to the earlier version, I dropped the changes to the
> > csumpartial files, which now get handled correctly by Kbuild
> > even when the export comes from a macro, and I also dropped the
> > changes to the bitops files, which were already fixed in a
> > patch from Nico.
> > 
> > The patch applies cleanly on top of the rmk/fixes tree but has
> > no effect there, as it also needs 4efca4ed05cb ("kbuild: modversions
> > for EXPORT_SYMBOL() for asm") and cc6acc11cad1 ("kbuild: be more
> > careful about matching preprocessed asm ___EXPORT_SYMBOL").
> > 
> > With the combination of rmk/fixes, torvalds/master and these two
> > patches, symbol versioning works again on ARM. As it is still
> > broken on almost all other architectures (powerpc is fixed,
> > x86 has a patch), I wonder if we should make CONFIG_MODVERSIONS
> > as broken for everything else.  
> 
> I'm not sure I like this at all.
> 
> The goal for moving EXPORT_SYMBOL() to assembly code where symbols were 
> defined is to make things close together and avoid those centralized 
> list of symbols that you can easily miss when modifying the actual code.

Right.

> 
> This series is therefore bringing back a centralized list of symbols in 
> a slightly different form, nullifying the advantages from having moved 
> EXPORT_SYMBOL() to asm code.  To me this looks like a big step backward.

Exported symbols have C declarations in headers already. For the most
part, anyway -- these ones Arnd adds are for compiler runtime which is
why some architectures haven't had the prototypes.

> Why not simply extending the original idea of keeping exports close to 
> the actual code by _also_ having a macro that provides the function 
> prototype alongside the EXPORT_SYMBOL() instance?  That could even be 
> expressed with some EXPORT_SYMBOL_PROTO(ret, sym, arg...) macro that 
> does it all.

Well, the reason is to get 4.9 working, I never thought asm-prototypes.h
was a beautiful solution or it should not be changed if we can find ways
to improve it.

EXPORT_SYMBOL_PROTO() for asm code seems possibly a good idea for 4.10.
Of course your exported symbols will still have their prototypes in
various headers -- that redundancy is inherent.

Thanks,
Nick

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