From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1750893AbWDSX0E (ORCPT ); Wed, 19 Apr 2006 19:26:04 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S1751317AbWDSX0D (ORCPT ); Wed, 19 Apr 2006 19:26:03 -0400 Received: from e34.co.us.ibm.com ([32.97.110.152]:52138 "EHLO e34.co.us.ibm.com") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1750893AbWDSX0B (ORCPT ); Wed, 19 Apr 2006 19:26:01 -0400 Subject: Re: [RFC PATCH 1/2] Makefile: export-symbol usage report generator. From: Ram Pai To: Adrian Bunk Cc: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, akpm@osdl.org, arjan@infradead.org, greg@kroah.com, hch@infradead.org In-Reply-To: <20060418140927.GB11582@stusta.de> References: <20060413123826.52D94470030@localhost> <20060418140927.GB11582@stusta.de> Content-Type: text/plain Organization: IBM Date: Wed, 19 Apr 2006 16:25:58 -0700 Message-Id: <1145489158.7323.169.camel@localhost> Mime-Version: 1.0 X-Mailer: Evolution 2.2.3 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org 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 >