On Thu, Feb 01, 2024 at 12:29:46PM +0300, Andrew Kanner wrote:
> On Thu, Feb 01, 2024 at 06:29:58AM +0100, Christoph Hellwig wrote:
> > On Wed, Jan 31, 2024 at 10:02:52PM +0300, Andrew Kanner wrote:
> > > Prototype for __symbol_get_gpl() was introduced in the initial git
> > > commit 1da177e4c3f4 ("Linux-2.6.12-rc2"), but was not used after that.
> > >
> > > In commit 9011e49d54dc ("modules: only allow symbol_get of
> > > EXPORT_SYMBOL_GPL modules") Christoph Hellwig switched __symbol_get()
> > > to process GPL symbols only, most likely this is what
> > > __symbol_get_gpl() was designed to do.
> > >
> > > We might either define __symbol_get_gpl() as __symbol_get() or remove
> > > it completely as suggested by Mauro Carvalho Chehab.
> >
> > Just remove it, there is no need to keep unused funtionality around.
> >
> > Btw, where did the discussion start? I hope you're not trying to
> > add new symbol_get users?
> >
>
> Of course not, no new users needed.
>
> I haven't discussed it directly. I found the unused __symbol_get_gpl()
> myself, but during investigation of wether it was ever used somewhere
> found the old patch series suggested by Mauro Carvalho Chehab (in Cc).
>
> Link: https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/5f001015990a76c0da35a4c3cf08e457ec353ab2.1652113087.git.mchehab@xxxxxxxxxx/
>
> The patch series is from 2022 and not merged. You can take [PATCH v6
> 1/4] which removes the unused symbol from the link.
>
> Or I can resend v2 with my commit msg. But not sure about how it works
> in such a case - will adding Suggested-by tag (if no objections from
> Mauro) with the Link be ok?
While you're at it, if you want to try it, you could see if you can
improve the situation more by looking at symbol_get() users that remain
and seeing if you can instead fix it with proper Kconfig dependency and
at build time. Then we can just remove it as well.
Luis
