On Saturday 24 November 2007 23:39:43 Andi Kleen wrote: > On Sat, Nov 24, 2007 at 03:53:34PM +1100, Rusty Russell wrote: > > So, you're saying that there's a problem with in-tree modules using > > symbols they shouldn't? Can you give an example?
[ Note: no response to this ] > > If people aren't reviewing, this won't make them review. I don't think > > the > > With millions of LOC the primary maintainers cannot review everything. > It's not that anybody is doing a bad job -- it is just so much code > that explicit mechanisms are better than implicit contracts. > > > problem is that people are conniving to avoid review. > > No of course not -- it is just too much code to let everything > be reviewed by the core subsystem maintainers. But with explicit > marking of internal symbols they would need to look at it because > the relationship will be clearly spelled out in the code. No, a one-line patch adding the module to the set is all they'd see. There's no reason to think this will cause more review. > > > Several distributions have policies that require to > > > keep the changes to these exported interfaces minimal and that > > > is very hard with thousands of exported symbol. With name spaces > > > the number of truly publicly exported symbols will hopefully > > > shrink to a much smaller, more manageable set. > > > > *This* makes sense. But it's not clear that the burden should be placed > > on kernel coders. You can create a list yourself. How do I tell the > > difference between "truly publicly exported" symbols and others? > > Out of tree solutions generally do not scale. Nobody else can > keep up with 2+ Million changes each merge window. > > > If a symbol has more than one in-tree user, it's hard to argue against an > > There are still classes of drivers. e.g. for the SCSI example: SD,SG,SR > etc. are more internal while low level drivers like aic7xxx are clearly > external drivers. Then mark those symbols internal and only allow concurrently-built modules to access them. That's simpler and requires much less maintenance than your solution. > > out-of-tree module using the symbol, unless you're arguing against *all* > > out-of-tree modules. > > No, actually namespaces kind of help out of tree modules. Once they only > use interfaces that are really generic driver interfaces and fairly stable > their authors will have much less pain forward porting to newer kernel > version. But currently the authors cannot even know what is an instable > internal interface and what is a generic relatively stable driver level > interface. Namespaces are a mechanism to make this all explicit. So in your head you have a notion of a kernel API, and you're trying to make that API explicit in the code. Sorry, but no. Rusty. - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
