[PATCH 0/5] autoparam

From: Magnus Damm
Date: Sun Mar 20 2005 - 18:10:52 EST


Here are a set of patches that makes it possible to autogenerate kernel command
line documentation from the source code. The approach is rather straightforward
- the parameter name, the type and the description are stored in a section
called __param_strings. After vmlinux is built this section is extracted using
objcopy and a script is used to generate a primitive - but up to date -
document.

Right now the section is left in the kernel binary. The document is currently
not generated from the Makefile, so the curious user should perform:

$ objcopy -j __param_strings vmlinux -O binary foo
$ chmod a+x scripts/section2text.rb
$ cat foo | ./scripts/section2text.rb

And yeah, you need to install ruby to run the script.

The ruby script section2text.rb does some checks to see if MODULE_PARM_DESC()
is used without module_param(). You will find interesting typos.

Future work that extends this idea could include replacing __setup(name) with
__setup(name, descr). And storing the documentation somewhere to make it easy
for the end user to look up the generated parameter list from the boot loader.

/ magnus

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