Re: inter_module_get and __symbol_get

From: Brian Gerst
Date: Wed Jan 12 2005 - 17:36:39 EST


Terence Ripperda wrote:
it would seem like the old mechanism was preferable, but perhaps I'm
missing something. in this particular case, there are times when a user
wants to avoid using agp at all for testing purposes, but if I
understand correctly, we'll be forced to load agpgart anyways due to
unresolved symbols.

In 2.6, the "agpgart" module is just the core. Without a gart driver loaded (via-agp for example), it does nothing. If you really don't want to have the hard dependency on agpgart, make the code using it conditionally compile on CONFIG_AGP or something.

but I think Keith Owens was correct in his larger picture view that
this mechanism is useful for much more than just agp. I'm just
confused why it was regressed from a non-gpl symbol to a gpl symbol
(or more appropriately why the non-gpl symbol was regressed in favor
of a gpl-only symbol).

symbol_get in it's current form is hard-coded to look for GPL symbols, hence it is exported GPL only. I have a rough patch that will allow symbol_get to use the license status of its caller to determine which symbols it can find. However this depends on whether or not symbol_get() is removed like some people want.

--
Brian Gerst
-
To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in
the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/