Re: [2.6 patch] kernel/audit.c: remove unused exports

Adrian Bunk
2006-12-01T23:24:11Z

On Wed, Nov 29, 2006 at 11:53:51AM -0500, Steve Grubb wrote:
> On Wednesday 29 November 2006 02:42, Tony Jones wrote:
>...
> > > > third party modules to generate audit messages.  Has anything changed?
> > >
> > > Why are these third party modules you are talking about not yet merged
> > > into the kernel and when will they be submitted for inclusion?
>
> It would appear that a new audit patch to ipsec wants these and a couple more
> things. So, at this point we should have something queued in netdev tree that
> will use these.

AFAIR, this ipsec patch only adds non-modular users.

> > We're talking about basic logging functionality here.
>
> Exactly. I can see 3rd party security vendors perhaps using this interface as
> well. I don't personally know of any that are using it, nor am I in
> discussions with any, but I could see them eventually finding this and using
> it as they use other basic interfaces like syslog or file access.

Reality has teached me that the only way to find out whether unused code
is really unused is to send a patch and listen whether someone is
screaming because he has an actual user. Then get this patch merged and
listen whether someone is screaming because he had an actual user.

As an example, it has just turned out that at about half of the drivers
that were not compiling and marked as BROKEN since at least 2.6.0 had
patches floating around somewhere and sending a patch to remove code
actually brought this code back into life.

We are talking about exports that are unused since they were introduced.
Either there are no users, or the existing users need the biggest
possible cluebat (removing the exports) reminding them that they should
get their ass up and submit their modules for inclusion in the kernel.

Re-adding them when users are merged into the kernel will always be
trivial.

> -Steve

cu
Adrian

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