Re: [PATCH 00/10 net-next] Convert CONFIG_IPV6 to built-in and remove stubs

[Krzysztof Kozlowski <krzk@kernel.org>]

On 09/03/2026 11:22, Krzysztof Kozlowski wrote:
> On 09/03/2026 03:19, Fernando Fernandez Mancera wrote:
>> Historically, the Linux kernel has supported compiling the IPv6 stack as
>> a loadable module. While this made sense in the early days of IPv6
>> adoption, modern deployments and distributions overwhelmingly either
>> build IPv6 directly into the kernel (CONFIG_IPV6=y) or disable it
>> entirely (CONFIG_IPV6=n). The modular IPv6 use-case provides little to
>> no practical benefit today.
> 
> It does. We all use generic kernels, thus it is one configuration for
> all boards and some setups have IPv6 and some not. The ones without IPv6
> just don't use that module.
> 
> Also, with these generic kernels (so again all machines are using same
> ones, e.g. distro) users can easily blacklist the module.
> 

Heh, I just checked, that's 6 MB module on arm64 which apparently you
want to put into the kernel! That's not acceptable. We strive to use
generic kernels also on very small machines, which are both storage and
CPU limited (CPU time needed to load additional 6 MB of image file).

Best regards,
Krzysztof