Bart, > Removing kernel drivers that are not used helps to reduce the workload > of a maintainer and hence is a rational action. Additionally, if > anyone would ever complain about removal of a kernel driver, it can be > brought back by reverting the commit through which it has been > removed. Martin, please reply if you see this differently. We remove crusty old SCSI drivers all the time. The heuristic is based on lack of user bug reports and absence of commits that are not due to kernel interface changes or trivial cleanups. So removing stuff is perfectly normal. The OSD protocol failed to get traction in the industry, adoption was very limited. If the code just plugged straight into existing kernel interfaces it would be easier to justify keeping it around. However, the OSD support requires bidirectional command support so we carry a bunch of additional plumbing in both block and SCSI to accommodate it. There are no other users of these interfaces, so dropping OSD would mean we could simplify some (hot) code paths. That would be a win in my book. Consequently, if a patch were to materialize that disentangled and removed OSD, I'd be inclined to merge it. But I do think that this is an orthogonal discussion to the innocuous __weak attribute cleanup. -- Martin K. Petersen Oracle Linux Engineering
