From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Rusty Russell Subject: Re: [PATCH RFC] [1/9] Core module symbol namespaces code and intro. Date: Wed, 28 Nov 2007 12:34:02 +1100 Message-ID: <200711281234.03381.rusty@rustcorp.com.au> References: <20071122343.446909000@suse.de> <200711271526.53065.rusty@rustcorp.com.au> <20071127105016.GC24223@one.firstfloor.org> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Cc: Roland Dreier , Andi Kleen , netdev@vger.kernel.org, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, sam@ravnborg.org To: Andi Kleen Return-path: In-Reply-To: <20071127105016.GC24223@one.firstfloor.org> Content-Disposition: inline Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org List-Id: netdev.vger.kernel.org On Tuesday 27 November 2007 21:50:16 Andi Kleen wrote: > Goals are: > - Limit the interfaces available for out of tree modules to reasonably > stable ones that are already used by a larger set of drivers. Not the goals. I haven't seen the *problem* yet. > - Limit size of exported API to make stable ABIs for enterprise > distributions easier > [Yes I know that is not a popular topic on l-k, but it's a day-to-day > problem for these distros and out of tree solutions do not work] That's a real problem, and I sympathise with the idea of marking symbols as externally useful (or, practically, mark internal). But we now need to decide what's "externally useful". The currently line for exports is simple: someone in-tree needs it. You dislike the suggestion to extend this to "if more than one in-tree needs it it's open". Currently your criterion seems to be "does the maintainer hate external modules?" which I don't think will be what you want... Cheers, Rusty.