Re: [PATCH] scripts: remove namespace.pl

[Jakub Kicinski]

On Fri,  9 Oct 2020 17:18:44 -0700 Jacob Keller wrote:
> namespace.pl is intended to help locate symbols which are defined but
> are not used externally. The goal is to avoid bloat of the namespace in
> the resulting kernel image.
> 
> The script relies on object data, and only finds unused symbols for the
> configuration used to generate that object data. This results in a lot
> of false positive warnings such as symbols only used by a single
> architecture, or symbols which are used externally only under certain
> configurations.
> 
> Running namespace.pl using allyesconfig, allmodconfig, and
> x86_64_defconfig yields the following results:
> 
> * allmodconfig
>   * 11122 unique symbol names with no external reference
>   * 1194 symbols listed as multiply defined
>   * 214 symbols it can't resolve
> * allyesconfig
>   * 10997 unique symbol names with no external reference
>   * 1194 symbols listed as multiply defined
>   * 214 symbols it can't resolve
> * x86_64_defconfig
>   * 5757 unique symbol names with no external reference
>   * 528 symbols listed as multiply defined
>   * 154 symbols it can't resolve
> 
> The script also has no way to easily limit the scope of the checks to
> a given subset of the kernel, such as only checking for symbols defined
> within a module or subsystem.
> 
> Discussion on public mailing lists seems to indicate that many view the
> tool output as suspect or not very useful (see discussions at [1] and
> [2] for further context).

Acked-by: Jakub Kicinski <kuba@xxxxxxxxxx>

Thanks!