linux-kernel - Re: [PATCH] modpost: drop '*_probe' from section check whitelist

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Message-ID: <20251022203955.GA3256590@ax162>
Date: Wed, 22 Oct 2025 22:39:55 +0200
From: Nathan Chancellor <nathan@...nel.org>
To: Johan Hovold <johan@...nel.org>
Cc: Nicolas Schier <nicolas.schier@...ux.dev>,
	Masahiro Yamada <masahiroy@...nel.org>,
	Thomas Gleixner <tglx@...utronix.de>, linux-kbuild@...r.kernel.org,
	linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org
Subject: Re: [PATCH] modpost: drop '*_probe' from section check whitelist

On Mon, Oct 20, 2025 at 11:16:13AM +0200, Johan Hovold wrote:
> Several symbol patterns used to be whitelisted to allow drivers to refer
> to functions annotated with __devinit and __devexit, which have since
> been removed.
> 
> Commit e1dc1bfe5b27 ("modpost: remove more symbol patterns from the
> section check whitelist") removed most of these patterns but left
> '*_probe' after a reported warning in an irqchip driver.
> 
> Turns out that was indeed an incorrect reference which has now been
> fixed by commit 9b685058ca93 ("irqchip/qcom-irq-combiner: Fix section
> mismatch").
> 
> A recently added clocksource driver also relies on this suffix to
> suppress another valid warning, and that is being fixed separately. [1]
> 
> Note that drivers with valid reasons for suppressing the warnings can
> use the __ref macros.
> 
> Link: https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/20251017054943.7195-1-johan@kernel.org/ [1]
> Signed-off-by: Johan Hovold <johan@...nel.org>
> ---
> 
> As mentioned above there are still two drivers relying on the "_probe"
> pattern to suppress valid warnings so perhaps it's best to hold off on
> merging this until the corresponding fixes are in mainline (e.g. next
> cycle or so unless Thomas can fast-track them).

Yeah, if it were fast tracked as a fix for 6.18, we could either use
that tag as the base for kbuild-next (as we have not take any patches
for 6.19 yet) or if they are 6.19 material, Thomas could provide us with
a signed tag or stable shared branch so that we could take this for 6.19
and have a clean tree. Whatever works.

Reviewed-by: Nathan Chancellor <nathan@...nel.org>

>  scripts/mod/modpost.c | 2 +-
>  1 file changed, 1 insertion(+), 1 deletion(-)
> 
> diff --git a/scripts/mod/modpost.c b/scripts/mod/modpost.c
> index 47c8aa2a6939..5c499dace0bb 100644
> --- a/scripts/mod/modpost.c
> +++ b/scripts/mod/modpost.c
> @@ -953,7 +953,7 @@ static int secref_whitelist(const char *fromsec, const char *fromsym,
>  	/* symbols in data sections that may refer to any init/exit sections */
>  	if (match(fromsec, PATTERNS(DATA_SECTIONS)) &&
>  	    match(tosec, PATTERNS(ALL_INIT_SECTIONS, ALL_EXIT_SECTIONS)) &&
> -	    match(fromsym, PATTERNS("*_ops", "*_probe", "*_console")))
> +	    match(fromsym, PATTERNS("*_ops", "*_console")))
>  		return 0;
>  
>  	/* Check for pattern 3 */
> -- 
> 2.49.1
>