From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: James Bottomley Subject: [parisc-linux] Re: Fw: Another problem with making things static Date: Sat, 10 Feb 2007 19:47:16 -0600 Message-ID: <1171158436.3373.51.camel__21190.0915754542$1416624280$gmane$org@mulgrave.il.steeleye.com> References: <20070210130136.9538498b.akpm@linux-foundation.org> <20070210214309.GP12958@stusta.de> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain Cc: Andrew Morton , Linus Torvalds , Parisc List To: Adrian Bunk Return-Path: In-Reply-To: <20070210214309.GP12958@stusta.de> List-Id: parisc-linux developers list List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Errors-To: parisc-linux-bounces@lists.parisc-linux.org On Sat, 2007-02-10 at 22:43 +0100, Adrian Bunk wrote: > First of all thanks to Andrew for forwarding this email to me - it's > otherwise a bit hard to defend against an email that doesn't reach me. I think if you read the email you'll find it didn't actually attack you at all ... I was careful only to ask for a change of policy before accepting a patch that does nothing but make a function static. > >... > > > > We're going to need this one reverting for parisc. If you remember > > we've been trying to push a compat_sys_rt_sigqueueinfo but Andi keeps > > objecting, so it's remained local to our tree (an hence so has the > > symbol usage). > > > > However, can we *please* stop this indiscriminate rampage through all > > the sybsystems making things static just because we can. The true test > > of whether a symbol should be static or not is whether it forms part of > > a sensible API or not. For subsystems with a well defined API, this is > > quite easy (although it hasn't prevented attempts to make even those > > symbols static). For some of our core subsystems (like the kernel API > > in this case) it's much less well defined ... although we have a good > > solid white area of things that must be part of the API and a good solid > > black area of things that mustn't, we still have a large grey area which > > things like kill_proc_info() fall into. > > > > For any person who wants to make a static symbol exported, we force an > > explanation out of them about what they're trying to do and why. Might > > I suggest we apply the same standard to anyone trying to make something > > static? i.e. they need to explain clearly why the symbol shouldn't be > > part of any rational API. > > And by how many percent will this bloat the kernel more in the long > term? That's something I'm more than willing to live with if the tradeoff is we think before making things static. > > Thanks, > > > > James > > Date: Thu, 8 Feb 2007 22:33:21 -0500 > > From: Kyle McMartin > > To: Matthew Wilcox > > Cc: Kyle McMartin , > > parisc-linux > > Subject: Re: [parisc-linux] 64-bit kernel broken. > > > > On Thu, Feb 08, 2007 at 08:24:54PM -0700, Matthew Wilcox wrote: > > > On Thu, Feb 08, 2007 at 07:43:14PM -0500, Kyle McMartin wrote: > > > > > Right. This got inadvertantly reverted with some other stuff. Fixed in a > > > > > second. > > > > > > > > Fixed in 1736b4bbf2bbfebaad06114d569f3617517524d1. > > > > > > make.err:/home/willy/nicol-2.6/arch/parisc/kernel/signal32.c:519: > > > warning: implicit declaration of function 'kill_proc_info' > > > make.err:(.text.compat_sys_rt_sigqueueinfo+0x80): undefined reference to > > > `kill_proc_info' > > > > > > > Guess who came home for Christmas > > > > commit d3228a887cae75ef2b8b1211c31c539bef5a5698 > > Author: Adrian Bunk > > Date: Wed Dec 6 20:38:22 2006 -0800 > > > > [PATCH] make kernel/signal.c:kill_proc_info() static > > > > Signed-off-by: Adrian Bunk > > Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton > > Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds > > There are hundreds of such patches of mine that got included in Linus' > tree and that didn't cause problems. Besides making the kernel smaller, > they regularly find "it should have been used" bugs. > In this one case, a patch that made something static that wasn't used > from other files during the over 9 years of it's existence clashes with > another patch that adds a user. I'm really not that interested in the number of users ... that's only one part of the measure of the relevance of an API. However, if we're actually going to revoke an API I'd like it to be done on the API's merits (or lack of them) rather than simply whether there are any current in-kernel users. > Can we agree that it's not a usual case that the first user gets added > after more than 9 years? Actually, the compat_rtsiginfo patch has been argued over and honed for at least 3 years, so I'd say your statement isn't necessarily correct. For some of its life, it was even in -mm. > And making it global again when a user gets included isn't really that > hard. The life of a non-x86 architecture maintainer is hard ... it involves having lots of volunteers tirelessly chasing down things that broke during the big two week merge frenzy. It would be really helpful if things like this didn't add to that burden. James _______________________________________________ parisc-linux mailing list parisc-linux@lists.parisc-linux.org http://lists.parisc-linux.org/mailman/listinfo/parisc-linux