[RFC] improving include header chaos

From: Roman Zippel
Date: Thu Oct 14 2004 - 16:51:48 EST


Hi,

Over the last few years the header situation has become more and more
fragile. A number of header files define core data structures but also
define inline functions which reference other data structures.
This often means we have to use macros instead of inline functions only to
get the whole thing compiled.
A common problem is that inline functions need access to task information,
the introduction of thread_info shifted this problem only. Now all archs
are forced to use the same stack layout as i386. ia64 uses a hack to get
around this.
The only solution I see to actually fix this problem and gain some more
flexibility is to separate the structure definitions from the inline
functions.
The following patches separate a few core data structures to other header
files to demonstrate how it would look like. The final goal is to move the
task structure into a separate header, so it can be used by various inline
functions, without the need to use macros or make header mess even worse.
Comments and better ideas how to solve this mess are welcome. Is there
actually any interest to get this fixed?

bye, Roman
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