Re: [PATCH] x86: sysfs - kill owner field from attribute

[Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>]

On Tue, 9 Sep 2008 19:11:02 -0400 "Parag Warudkar" <parag.lkml@gmail.com> wrote:

> Tejun's commit 7b595756ec1f49e0049a9e01a1298d53a7faaa15 made sysfs
> attribute->owner unnecessary.
> But the field was left in the structure to ease the merge. It's been
> over a year since that change and it is now time to start killing
> attribute->owner along with its users - one arch at a time!
> 
> This patch is attempt #1 to get rid of attribute->owner only for
> CONFIG_X86_64 or CONFIG_X86_32 .
> We will deal with other arches later on as and when possible - avr32
> will be the next since that is something I can test.
> Compile (make allyesconfig / make allmodconfig / custom config) and boot tested.
> 
> I would prefer to have this in -mm or one of the other trees for some
> time before hitting mainline just to make sure there are no issues.
> 

I'm about to send this in to Linus.

> --- a/include/linux/sysfs.h
> +++ b/include/linux/sysfs.h
> @@ -21,12 +21,15 @@ struct kobject;
>  struct module;
> 
>  /* FIXME
> - * The *owner field is no longer used, but leave around
> - * until the tree gets cleaned up fully.
> + * The *owner field is no longer used.
> + * x86 tree has been cleaned up. The owner
> + * attribute is still left for other arches.
>   */
>  struct attribute {
>  	const char		*name;
> +#if !defined(CONFIG_X86_64) && !defined(CONFIG_X86_32)
>  	struct module		*owner;
> +#endif
>  	mode_t			mode;
>  };

But this part was dropped.  I did this a while ago because people kept
on adding new code to linux-next which referenced module.owner and my
tree kept on breaking.

A good time to finish this off would be immediately after 2.6.28-rc1 is
released.  Please do another pass over the whole tree and send a single
patch which fixes up those recently-introdced usages of module.owner
and which also adds the above #ifndef.

Thanks.