From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Joe Perches Subject: Re: [PATCH 0/8] include/net: next set of extern removals Date: Thu, 01 Aug 2013 09:29:20 -0700 Message-ID: <1375374560.2034.52.camel@joe-AO722> References: <24958.1375358650@warthog.procyon.org.uk> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="ISO-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Cc: netdev@vger.kernel.org, linux-hams@vger.kernel.org, linux-wireless@vger.kernel.org, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, linux-afs@lists.infradead.org To: David Howells Return-path: In-Reply-To: <24958.1375358650@warthog.procyon.org.uk> Sender: linux-hams-owner@vger.kernel.org List-Id: netdev.vger.kernel.org On Thu, 2013-08-01 at 13:04 +0100, David Howells wrote: > Joe Perches wrote: > > Standardize on no extern use on function prototypes > Can we please standardise on _having_ externs on function prototypes? Why? What value is there in using extern for function prototypes? Your argument for "picking out at a glance" https://lkml.org/lkml/2013/8/1/237 really doesn't make sense to me. Basically, anything with parentheses that's not a #define is an extern. Exceptions exist for extern function pointers, but those are fairly unusual anyway. Outside of netfilter, extern function pointers are only used about a dozen times total in the kernel tree. So, please provide some examples supporting your view.