From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1030235AbWEKLns (ORCPT ); Thu, 11 May 2006 07:43:48 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S1030234AbWEKLns (ORCPT ); Thu, 11 May 2006 07:43:48 -0400 Received: from cantor2.suse.de ([195.135.220.15]:10958 "EHLO mx2.suse.de") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1030235AbWEKLnr (ORCPT ); Thu, 11 May 2006 07:43:47 -0400 To: linuxram@us.ibm.com (Ram Pai) Cc: agruen@suse.de, akpm@osdl.org, arjan@infradead.org, bunk@stusta.de, greg@kroah.com, hch@infradead.org, jbeulich@novell.com, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, mathur@us.ibm.com Subject: Re: [PATCH 4/4] KBUILD: export-symbol usage report generator References: <20060510235546.8A006470034@localhost> From: Andi Kleen Date: 11 May 2006 13:43:27 +0200 In-Reply-To: <20060510235546.8A006470034@localhost> Message-ID: User-Agent: Gnus/5.09 (Gnus v5.9.0) Emacs/21.2 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org linuxram@us.ibm.com (Ram Pai) writes: > From: Ram Pai > > The following patch provides the ability to generate a report of > (1) All the exported symbols and their in-kernel-module usage count > (2) For each module, lists the modules and their exported symbols, on > which it depends. Very nice. One thing I always wanted to see was a more focussed EXPORT_SYMBOL. A lot of symbols are only exported for a single other module (e.g. most of the networking exports are for IPv6) but are actually internal and shouldn't be messed with by other modules. It would be nice if name spaces could be defined that say "this export is only for modules in this name space" and then e.g. have IPv6 be in the TCPINTERNALS name space and nobody else. I think adding something like this could clean up the bewildering jungle of exports greatly. _GPL is kind of like that already, but it is not fine grained enough. -Andi