Re: [RFC PATCH 1/2] Makefile: export-symbol usage report generator.

[Ram Pai <linuxram@us.ibm.com>]

On Tue, 2006-04-18 at 16:09 +0200, Adrian Bunk wrote:
> On Thu, Apr 13, 2006 at 05:38:26AM -0700, Ram Pai wrote:
> 
> > I ran a report to extract export-symbol usage by kernel modules.  The results
> > are at http://www.sudhaa.com/~ram/misc/export_report.txt
> > 
> > The report lists:
> > 1. All the exported symbols and their usage counts by in-kernel modules.
> > 2. for each in-kernel module, lists the modules and the exported symbols
> > 	from those modules, that it depends on.
> > 
> > Highlights: 
> > 	On x86 architecture
> >  	(1) 880 exported symbols not used by any in-kernel modules.
> >         (2) 1792 exported symbols used only once.
> > 
> > I hope this report/tool shall help all inkernel modules to revisit their usage
> > of kernel interfaces.
> > 
> > This patch integrates the report-generator into the kernel build process. After
> > applying this patch, invoke 'make export_report'  and it creates the report in
> > Documentation/export_report.txt
> >...
> 
> I like your patch, but I have observed two issues:
> - please don't force an allmodconfig, simply use the currently compiled
>   kernel 

Looking for ideas. Its hard to extract out the imported symbols unless
they are compiled as modules. Running the report on a currently compiled
kernel will miss most of the subsystems that are not compile as modules.
Hence the report wont be complete.  Any suggestions?

> - please output to stdout instead of a fixed file

ok.

> 
> This way, it would also be consistent with other Makefile targets like 
> namespacecheck.
> 
> cu
> Adrian
>