Re: [PATCH v1 0/3] drivers/char: remove /dev/kmem for good

[Balbir Singh]

On Wed, Mar 24, 2021 at 12:24:12PM -0700, Andrew Morton wrote:
> 
> > Let's remove /dev/kmem, which is unused and obsolete.
> 
> I grabbed these.  Silently - the cc list is amazing ;)
> 
> I was wondering if it would be better to permanently disable /dev/kmem
> in Kconfig along with a comment "if you really want this thing then
> email peeps@places with a very good reason why".  Let that ride for a
> year or three then blam.
> 
> But this is so much more attractive, and it certainly sounds like it's
> worth any damage it might cause.
> 
> We do tend to think about distros.  I bet there are a number of weird
> embedded type systems using /dev/kmem - it's amazing what sorts of
> hacks those people will put up with the get something out the door. 
> But those systems tend to carry a lot of specialized changes anyway, so
> they can just add "revert David's patch" to their pile.
>


I wonder if we should have the opposite of driver/staging and call it
outgoing, with a big thank you to the users and developers and also
to indicate this feature will be removed in the next (few) merge(s)
cycles. I guess not all code can be accumulated under a single
hierarchy. May not be worth the effort, just thinking out loud.

Balbir Singh