Re: [PATCH v4 2/3] driver core: make software nodes available earlier

[Arnd Bergmann]

On Tue, Mar 31, 2026, at 10:55, Andy Shevchenko wrote:
> On Mon, Mar 30, 2026 at 11:52:34PM -0700, Dmitry Torokhov wrote:
>> On March 30, 2026 11:25:33 PM PDT, Andy Shevchenko <andriy.shevchenko@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>> >On Mon, Mar 30, 2026 at 02:46:45PM -0700, Dmitry Torokhov wrote:
>> 
>> The code section will be discarded when the kernel finishes booting so it
>> only increases image size on disk. 
>
> Almost true. Interesting microblaze case, where it's not discarded.
> But I can't find where it's actually used on any architecture.

I'm pretty sure that is just mistake

>> >A bit of archaeology:
>> >
>> >The first time it appeared was in the bcc2152647b8 ("Import 2.4.0-test3pre3").
>> >Then somehow spread a bit (but not much).
>> 
>> And it shows how useful it is. Maybe it had some purpose a long time ago, but
>> at present time this code will never be executed since it cannot be built as
>> a module.
>
> Are you sure about definition of __exitcall? As I read init.h the macro
> is defined when it's not a MODULE.

I also tried to trace this back now, and from what I found, both
the __init_call and __exit_call annotations gained __attribute_used__
back in lniux-2.6.0 as a way to prevent both gcc-3.3 and gcc-3.4
from warning about unused functions or discarding initcalls that
are actually required.

My best guess is that __exit_call should just use
__attribute__((unused)) instead of __attribute__((used)) and
have the compiler drop it from built-in code instead of the linker:

diff --git a/include/linux/init.h b/include/linux/init.h
index 5db55c660124..ad5c19763034 100644
--- a/include/linux/init.h
+++ b/include/linux/init.h
@@ -47,7 +47,7 @@
 #define __initdata     __section(".init.data")
 #define __initconst    __section(".init.rodata")
 #define __exitdata     __section(".exit.data")
-#define __exit_call    __used __section(".exitcall.exit")
+#define __exit_call    __maybe_unused __section(".exitcall.exit")
 
 /*
  * modpost check for section mismatches during the kernel build.

     Arnd