On Tue, Oct 18, 2022 at 05:10:53PM +0200, Johan Hovold wrote: > On Mon, Oct 17, 2022 at 12:34:22PM -0500, Bjorn Helgaas wrote: > > On Mon, Oct 17, 2022 at 01:47:05PM +0200, Johan Hovold wrote: > > > Allow the Qualcomm PCIe controller driver to be built as a module, which > > > is useful for multi-platform kernels as well as during development. > > > > There are two different goals here, and there's no real reason to > > bundle them together: > > > > 1) Make qcom a loadable module. This is a hard requirement so > > multi-platform kernels don't need to build in all drivers > > statically. > > > > 2) Make qcom unloadable. This is a high want, possibly even a > > requirement for developers, but is not really a big issue for > > users. > > > > There are different changes required: 1) requires the Kconfig change; > > 2) requires .remove() to be implemented. Since there's no requirement > > that these be done together, let's split them into separate patches. > > > > Then we can make sure that at least 1) gets done, and if for any > > reason 2) isn't safe or breaks something, we can at least bisect and > > if necessary revert it without losing 1). > > Implementing 1) in itself requires more than simply splitting this > patch. And I don't think we should be making life harder for developers, > as well as users assisting during debugging, by going in that direction. If you're saying this patch can't be split, can you elaborate on the details of *why* it can't be split? > We have tons of modules in the kernel and very few that cannot be > unloaded. Anyone who doesn't trust root to not unload modules can > always disable unloading completely using CONFIG_MODULE_UNLOAD. This is all true, but IIUC, the issue is about unloading IRQ controller drivers, and this doesn't address that. I don't have a clear understanding of the issue, and it would be nice if a patch that specifically added unloadability could elaborate on that. Then we can decide that "yes, this is a risk, and we're willing to accept it." An argument that "tons of modules do this" totally avoids the issues of this particular case. Bjorn
