Re: [patch 1/17] Infrastructure to mark exported symbols as unused-for-removal-soon

[Arjan van de Ven <arjan@linux.intel.com>]

Randy.Dunlap wrote:
> On Tue, 02 May 2006 16:53:07 +0200 Arjan van de Ven wrote:
> 
>> Hi,
>> As discussed on lkml before; the patch with the infrastructure to deprecate unused symbols
>>
>> This is patch one in a series of 17; to not overload lkml the other 16 will be mailed direct;
>> people who want to see them all can see them at http://www.fenrus.org/unused
>>
>>
>>
>> This patch temporarily adds EXPORT_UNUSED_SYMBOL and EXPORT_UNUSED_SYMBOL_GPL.
>> These will be used as transition measure for symbols that aren't used in the 
>> kernel and are on the way out. When a module uses such a symbol, a warning
>> is printk'd at modprobe time.
>>
>> The main reason for removing unused exports is size: eacho export takes roughly
>> between 100 and 150 bytes of kernel space in the binary. This patch gives
>> users the option to immediately get this size gain via a config option.
> 
> Do the exports take any space at runtime in RAM?

yes; roughly 100 to 150 bytes or so

> scsi patch comments (only one that I have seen) say:
> +EXPORT_UNUSED_SYMBOL(scsi_print_status); /* removal in 2.6.19 */
> 
> and When: above says "before 2.6.19".  Those don't agree.
> Please fix.  Thanks.

there's no conflict actually; they'll be gone in 2.6.19, by removing them just before that ;)