From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1752600Ab0CGLXw (ORCPT ); Sun, 7 Mar 2010 06:23:52 -0500 Received: from smtp1.linux-foundation.org ([140.211.169.13]:44756 "EHLO smtp1.linux-foundation.org" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1751047Ab0CGLXv (ORCPT ); Sun, 7 Mar 2010 06:23:51 -0500 Date: Sun, 7 Mar 2010 03:23:34 -0800 (PST) From: Linus Torvalds X-X-Sender: torvalds@localhost.localdomain To: Alexey Dobriyan cc: don.mullis@gmail.com, david@fromorbit.com, akpm@linux-foundation.org, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Subject: Re: modules, "modules" and CONFIG_LIST_SORT In-Reply-To: <20100307091223.GA4895@x200> Message-ID: References: <20100307091223.GA4895@x200> User-Agent: Alpine 2.00 (LFD 1167 2008-08-23) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org List-ID: X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org On Sun, 7 Mar 2010, Alexey Dobriyan wrote: > > Unpleasant side effect of the change is that some modules stop being > true modules, i. e. admin is unable to start using them without reboot > if kernel was compiled without that tiny amount of core kernel. > > Having used this feature several times, I think it'd be correct > to preserve this behaviour, at least not regress for those modules > which benefitted from it. For modules which were always "modules" (ipv6) > it's fine to continue. > > Can we declare some policy about it? > > And revert LIST_SORT commit if yes. Yeah, I think that in cases like this, you have a very good argument: LIST_SORT enables code that isn't that large, and is clearly very generic. And changing the config later and trying to compile and install a module is rather sane. And if that new module needs LIST_SORT, you're screwed because it didn't get compiled in originally. Honestly, personally I'd rather have a real library that modules can link to _before_ even loading into kernel space, but that's not how we've traditionally done things. So I guess we should just revert that commit. Linus