Messages in this thread | | | From | Rusty Russell <> | Subject | Re: Userspace Test Framework for module loader porting | Date | Mon, 13 Jan 2003 11:27:21 +1100 |
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In message <15903.30632.576801.904652@napali.hpl.hp.com> you write: > >>>>> On Wed, 08 Jan 2003 22:44:15 +1100, Rusty Russell <rusty@rustcorp.com.a u> said: > Yeah, I'm lazy: I don't really want to have to deal with two new > module loaders: one for 2.6, soon to be followed by one for 2.7. But > if someone volunteers to do and _maintain_ an interim kernel loader, > that's fine with me.
Well, "soon" here is > 12 months away, of course. And most of it involves removing, rather than adding, code.
> Rusty> I thought about letting archs choose which one they wanted to > Rusty> use, but it would really mess up the core code. Of course, > Rusty> the transition won't break userspace (kind of the whole point > Rusty> of the in-kernel module loader). > > But it would be more in keeping with the Linux philosophy: do the > Right Thing, fix up "broken" stuff by doing whatever is necessary.
I think you missed the "work around what we can't change" (eg. always initializing per-cpu variables because Sparc's toolchain is broken, or adding that crazy restart stuff so we didn't have to create a one-arg re-enterable nanosleep then make glibc use it).
And, of course, the other Golden Rule: "if it's not x86, it doesn't matter" 8)
> I'm also a bit worried about changing module loaders so often. Yeah, > once you switch to a kernel-loader, presumably users won't be > affected, but (kernel-module) developers will be.
While ET_DYN modules are a reasonably serious win for ia64 (and probably hppa) (ie. -300 lines or so), they're a minor win for alpha and ppc64 (-100 lines or so), and no real change for arm, i386, ppc, sparc, and sparc64. It's a lose for x86_64 (toolchain fixes, unless they want to use -fPIC for modules), mips and mips64 (major toolchain fixes, unless they want to use -fPIC for modules and stop using r28 for current inside modules).
So, if I were ia64 maintainer, I'd be lobbying for ET_DYN modules now, too, but I don't it's a big enough general win to outweigh the other problems.
Sorry, Rusty. -- Anyone who quotes me in their sig is an idiot. -- Rusty Russell. - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
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