linux-kernel - Re: [PATCH v4 1/2] Provide in-kernel headers for making it easy to extend the kernel

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Date:   Mon, 18 Mar 2019 12:11:23 -0700
From:   Daniel Colascione <dancol@...gle.com>
To:     Alan Cox <gnomes@...rguk.ukuu.org.uk>
Cc:     Greg KH <gregkh@...uxfoundation.org>,
        Joel Fernandes <joel@...lfernandes.org>,
        Geert Uytterhoeven <geert@...ux-m68k.org>,
        Linux Kernel Mailing List <linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org>,
        Andrew Morton <akpm@...ux-foundation.org>,
        Alexei Starovoitov <ast@...nel.org>,
        atish patra <atishp04@...il.com>,
        Dan Williams <dan.j.williams@...el.com>,
        Dietmar Eggemann <dietmar.eggemann@....com>,
        Guenter Roeck <groeck@...omium.org>,
        Jonathan Corbet <corbet@....net>,
        Karim Yaghmour <karim.yaghmour@...rsys.com>,
        Kees Cook <keescook@...omium.org>,
        Android Kernel Team <kernel-team@...roid.com>,
        "open list:DOCUMENTATION" <linux-doc@...r.kernel.org>,
        open list:KERNEL SELFTEST FRAMEWORK <linux-kselftest@...r.kernel.org>, linux-trace-devel@...r.kernel.org, Manoj Rao <linux@...ojrajarao.com>, Masahiro Yamada <yamada.masahiro@...ionext.com>, Masami Hiramatsu <mhiramat@...nel.org>, qais.yousef@....com, Randy Dunlap <rdunlap@...radead.org>, Steven Rostedt <rostedt@...dmis.org>, Shuah Khan <shuah@...nel.org>, 
        <yhs@...com>
Subject: Re: [PATCH v4 1/2] Provide in-kernel headers for making it easy to
 extend the kernel

On Mon, Mar 18, 2019 at 11:58 AM Alan Cox <gnomes@...rguk.ukuu.org.uk> wrote:
>
> > I think the compressed tarball is much simpler/easier overall.  If
> > someone really wants the filesystem, they just uncompress it into a
> > tmpfs mount.  It's much less moving kernel code to worry about.
>
> There is an even simpler approach. The people who want this for whatever
> strange reason are Android folks. Android lives on flash, so all they have
> to do is put the headers in a flash file system that is updated with the
> kernel and mount it wherever they like. Simple matter of a bit of
> devicetree no ?

Did you read the rest of the thread? We talked a lot about the
problems with filesystem-based approaches. It's not just "Android
folks" who want BPF-based tools to Just Work, and it's not "strange"
to want that --- what's strange is this reflexive opposition to a
pragmatic feature (one that nobody has to use) that will make a lot of
system analysis cases Just Work. There's nothing wrong with having the
kernel describe itself, and there's no reason to push tons of
error-prone metadata tracking to userspace when the kernel can just
talk about itself in a guaranteed-correct manner. Every argument
against this work is also an argument against /proc/config.gz.
Completely unsurprisingly, /proc/config.gz is in practice super
useful.