linux-kernel - Re: linux-kernel: Unused static inline functions

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Message-ID: <572b03bdc3eed286c5ed20887d42f674bd93336e.camel@perches.com>
Date:   Thu, 23 Apr 2020 14:22:01 -0700
From:   Joe Perches <joe@...ches.com>
To:     Nick Desaulniers <ndesaulniers@...gle.com>,
        Julia Lawall <julia.lawall@...6.fr>,
        Dan Carpenter <error27@...il.com>
Cc:     LKML <linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org>,
        clang-built-linux <clang-built-linux@...glegroups.com>,
        Greg KH <gregkh@...uxfoundation.org>
Subject: Re: linux-kernel: Unused static inline functions

(adding Julia Lawall and Dan Carpenter who may have ideas too)

On Thu, 2020-04-23 at 11:57 -0700, Nick Desaulniers wrote:
> I've been mulling over teaching a class internally at Google on
> getting started contributing to the Linux kernel.  I think this idea
> (removing dead static inline functions) is perfect for having lots of
> small little tasks that are clear wins.  Do you have any other ideas
> for work that there's a lot of?  Like lots of small little bite sized
> tasks?  Maybe more fallthrough conversion? Anything else?

Some generic ideas:

o look for always unused/unreferenced, or always static
  value function arguments and remove them

o int function returns constrained to 0 or 1 could be
  converted to bool.

And some logging ideas:

o printk to tracing conversions

o removal of printks used just for function tracing
  as ftrace works well

o pr_<level> macro conversions to functions to save
  object space

o singletons for pr_fmt

o default use of #define pr_fmt(fmt) KBUILD_MODNAME ": " fmt
  and removal of the ~1200 current defines treewide

> Happy to have folks use your script and add your suggested by tag.

Suggested-by doesn't have much value to me,
especially for scripted stuff.

I'd be happy enough that it gets done eventually.