Re: [PATCH] module: remove MODULE_VERSION()

[Nam Cao <namcao@linutronix.de>]

Petr Pavlu <petr.pavlu@suse.com> writes:
> On 3/13/26 3:20 PM, Greg Kroah-Hartman wrote:
>> Module "versions" do not make sense as the kernel is built all at once,
>> the "version" is the overall kernel version number, so modules can not
>> really be described as having a unique version given that they rely on
>> the infrastructure of the whole kernel.
>> 
>> For now, just make this an "empty" define, to keep existing code
>> building properly as the tree is slowly purged of the use of this over
>> time.
>> 
>> This macro will be removed entirely in the future when there are no
>> in-tree users.
...
> The original patch "Add a MODULE_VERSION macro" [1] from 2004 doesn't
> say much about the motivation for adding module versions, but it does
> mention that they should be accessible via sysfs. That was implemented
> a year later in commit c988d2b28454 ("[PATCH] modules: add version and
> srcversion to sysfs") [2], which primarily discusses use cases related
> to DKMS, and to administrators + tech support needing to know what is
> actually loaded on the system. For the latter, I believe srcversion (or
> something similar) should be sufficient.

I develop an external module. And our userspace program does rely on
this to get the module's version on the user's system. This patch would
break our program.

I can change to use a different mechanism. But surely I am not the only
one who write something that rely on this.

Best regards,
Nam