On Fri, Apr 28, 2017 at 01:49:49PM -0700, Darren Hart wrote: > > > Non-modular drivers do not scale. This is a serious issue considering > > > the growth rate of the kernel. > > > > Again, this is an oversimplification that doesn't reflect reality. > > There are many valid reasons why some drivers be built-in only. The > > whole world isn't a distro looking to say "=m" to every config option > > simply because they don't have the time or resources to actually triage > > them all and see what is relevant for their use case(es). > > > > The point is valid though, and something we need to be keeping an eye on, > especially with all the non-architectural SoC feature drivers we're seeing code > roll in for. I appreciate you raising the concern Jean. FWIW: There's things like ACPI-Processor-Idle and intel_idle that need to be built-in for correctness sake. They can mark the TSC unstable, and this should be done before we run userspace, which with unstable TSC could see wobbly time before we kill the TSC. This is a somewhat non-obvious case, and on the face of it those could be modular drivers. But building them as modules gets them loaded far too late if ever. These are subtle things and easily overlooked.
