Re: RE : 2.6.6-rc3-mm2 : REGPARAM forced => no external module withsome object code only

From: Eric Valette
Date: Thu May 06 2004 - 08:07:59 EST


Zephaniah E. Hull wrote:
On Wed, May 05, 2004 at 01:18:09PM -0700, Andrew Morton wrote:

Eric Valette <eric.valette@xxxxxxx> wrote:

The Changelog says nothing really important but forcing REGPARAM is rather important : it breaks any external module using object only code that calls a kernel function.

This is why we should remove the option - to reduce the number of ways in
which the kernel might have been built. Yes, there will be a bit of
transition pain while these people catch up.


Any guess on when REGPARAM and 4KSTACKS will end up in Linus' tree?
(Of interest because people may not consider it that important until
they know it really is going to bite them.)

Well, may I suggest that the impact on end users is absolutely not the same :
- 4KSTACKS only bites people that use badly written drivers allocating a lot of local variables on the stack (Nvidia, ...) and the availiable stack using this config is (from what I've read on this list) roughly equivalent to what is availiable in 2.4 series...
- REGPARAM kills any driver whith object only file containing system calls,

Concerning the number of ways the kernel is compiled, I think that the number of GCC version produce even more debugging path than theses options. I really wonder if this is not a tactical game to push hardware manufacturer. But beware it could strike back because some supplier may just give up if they have to work on their driver even on stable series...


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