Re: [PATCH 00/17] Add memberof(), split some headers, and slightly simplify code

Andy Shevchenko
2021-11-19T16:10:54Z

On Fri, Nov 19, 2021 at 04:57:46PM +0100, Arnd Bergmann wrote:
> On Fri, Nov 19, 2021 at 4:06 PM Alejandro Colomar (man-pages)
> <alx.manpages@gmail.com> wrote:
> > On 11/19/21 15:47, Arnd Bergmann wrote:
> > > On Fri, Nov 19, 2021 at 12:36 PM Alejandro Colomar
> >
> > Yes, I would like to untangle the dependencies.
> >
> > The main reason I started doing this splitting
> > is because I wouldn't be able to include
> > <linux/stddef.h> in some headers,
> > because it pulled too much stuff that broke unrelated things.
> >
> > So that's why I started from there.
> >
> > I for example would like to get NULL in memberof()
> > without puling anything else,
> > so <linux/NULL.h> makes sense for that.
> >
> > It's clear that every .c wants NULL,
> > but it's not so clear that every .c wants
> > everything that <linux/stddef.h> pulls indirectly.
>
> From what I can tell, linux/stddef.h is tiny, I don't think it's really
> worth optimizing this part. I have spent some time last year
> trying to untangle some of the more interesting headers, but ended
> up not completing this as there are some really hard problems
> once you start getting to the interesting bits.
>
> The approach I tried was roughly:
>
> - For each header in the kernel, create a preprocessed version
> that includes all the indirect includes, from that start a set
> of lookup tables that record which header is eventually included
> by which ones, and the size of each preprocessed header in
> bytes
>
> - For a given kernel configuration (e.g. defconfig or allmodconfig)
> that I'm most interested in, look at which files are built, and what
> the direct includes are in the source files.
>
> - Sort the headers by the product of the number of direct includes
> and the preprocessed size: the largest ones are those that are
> worth looking at first.
>
> - use graphviz to visualize the directed graph showing the includes
> between the top 100 headers in that list. You get something like
> I had in [1], or the version afterwards at [2].
>
> - split out unneeded indirect includes from the headers in the center
> of that graph, typically by splitting out struct definitions.
>
> - repeat.
>
> The main problem with this approach is that as soon as you start
> actually reducing the unneeded indirect includes, you end up with
> countless .c files that no longer build because they are missing a
> direct include for something that was always included somewhere
> deep underneath, so I needed a second set of scripts to add
> direct includes to every .c file.

Can't it be done with cocci support?

> On the plus side, I did see something on the order of a 30%
> compile speed improvement with clang, which is insane
> given that this only removed dead definitions.

Thumb up!

> > But I'll note that linux/fs.h, linux/sched.h, linux/mm.h are
> > interesting headers for further splitting.
> >
> >
> > BTW, I also have a longstanding doubt about
> > how header files are organized in the kernel,
> > and which headers can and cannot be included
> > from which other files.
> >
> > For example I see that files in samples or scripts or tools,
> > that redefine many things such as offsetof() or ARRAY_SIZE(),
> > and I don't know if there's a good reason for that,
> > or if I should simply remove all that stuff and
> > include <linux/offsetof.h> everywhere I see offsetof() being used.
>
> The main issue here is that user space code should not
> include anything outside of include/uapi/ and arch/*/include/uapi/
>
> offsetof() is defined in include/linux/stddef.h, so this is by
> definition not accessible here. It appears that there is also
> an include/uapi/linux/stddef.h that is really strange because
> it includes linux/compiler_types.h, which in turn is outside
> of uapi/. This should probably be fixed.
>
> Arnd
>
> [1] https://drive.google.com/file/d/14IKifYDadg2W5fMsefxr4373jizo9bLl/view?usp=sharing
> [2] https://drive.google.com/file/d/1pWQcv3_ZXGqZB8ogV-JOfoV-WJN2UNnd/view?usp=sharing

--
With Best Regards,
Andy Shevchenko