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Message-ID: <20180716153356.GA8034@kroah.com> Date: Mon, 16 Jul 2018 17:33:56 +0200 From: Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@...uxfoundation.org> To: Martijn Coenen <maco@...roid.com> Cc: linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org, Masahiro Yamada <yamada.masahiro@...ionext.com>, Michal Marek <michal.lkml@...kovi.net>, Geert Uytterhoeven <geert@...ux-m68k.org>, Thomas Gleixner <tglx@...utronix.de>, Ingo Molnar <mingo@...hat.com>, "H. Peter Anvin" <hpa@...or.com>, x86@...nel.org, Alan Stern <stern@...land.harvard.edu>, Oliver Neukum <oneukum@...e.com>, Arnd Bergmann <arnd@...db.de>, Jessica Yu <jeyu@...nel.org>, Stephen Boyd <sboyd@...eaurora.org>, Philippe Ombredanne <pombredanne@...b.com>, Kate Stewart <kstewart@...uxfoundation.org>, Sam Ravnborg <sam@...nborg.org>, linux-kbuild@...r.kernel.org, linux-m68k@...ts.linux-m68k.org, linux-usb@...r.kernel.org, usb-storage@...ts.one-eyed-alien.net, linux-scsi@...r.kernel.org, linux-arch@...r.kernel.org, maco@...gle.com, sspatil@...gle.com, malchev@...gle.com, joelaf@...gle.com Subject: Re: [PATCH 0/6] Symbol namespaces On Mon, Jul 16, 2018 at 02:21:19PM +0200, Martijn Coenen wrote: > As of Linux 4.17, there are more than 30000 exported symbols > in the kernel. There seems to be some consensus amongst > kernel devs that the export surface is too large, and hard > to reason about. > > Generally, these symbols fall in one of these categories: > 1) Symbols actually meant for drivers > 2) Symbols that are only exported because functionality is > split over multiple modules, yet they really shouldn't > be used by modules outside of their own subsystem > 3) Symbols really only meant for in-tree use > > When module developers try to upstream their code, it > regularly turns out that they are using exported symbols > that they really shouldn't be using. This problem is even > bigger for drivers that are currently out-of-tree, which > may be using many symbols that they shouldn't be using, > and that break when those symbols are removed or modified. > > This patch allows subsystem maintainers to partition their > exported symbols into separate namespaces, and module > authors to import such namespaces only when needed. > > This allows subsystem maintainers to more easily limit > availability of these namespaced symbols to other parts of > the kernel. It can also be used to partition the set of > exported symbols for documentation purposes; for example, > a set of symbols that is really only used for debugging > could be in a "SUBSYSTEM_DEBUG" namespace. To give people a bit more background here, this is something that both Andi Kleen and I talked about over a decade ago. Martijn based his work on Andi's original patches and made them all work well, something that I was unable to do :) His addition of using the build system to automatically generate a patch for a subsystem based on the symbol namespace changes is frickin amazing. Great work here, this is something that I have wanted for the kernel for a long time. greg k-h
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