Re: [PATCH v9 2/8] kbuild: add modules_thick.builtin

From: Luis Chamberlain
Date: Mon Nov 21 2022 - 14:19:03 EST


On Mon, Nov 21, 2022 at 11:12:52AM -0800, Luis Chamberlain wrote:
> On Mon, Nov 21, 2022 at 03:21:10PM +0000, Nick Alcock wrote:
> > One question: do you think it's worthwhile me submitting patches to
> > de-MODULE_* things that need it?
>
> 100% yes.
>
> Yes please remove all that module declration helpers for things that are
> not modules, and after you add your helper which will nag at build time
> when it finds new ones.
>
> For justification just mention in the commit log that after commit
> 8b41fc4454e ("kbuild: create modules.builtin without Makefile.modbuiltin or
> tristate.conf") we rely on the module license tag to generate the
> modules.builtin file and so built-in code which uses module helpers
> just need to be removed.

You should also mention what modules.builtin is used for as per our
Documentation/kbuild/kbuild.rst, and that it is only used for
modprobe to *not* fail when trying to load a module which is
built-in.

And so, the removing these tags doesn't fix anything critical
in particular, but it does fix false positive uses of userspace
modprobe use against built-in symbols.

That would *complete* the commit log with a clear justification and
evaluation of impact.

How many of these are we talking about? I'm happy to take them
via modules-next. I'd hope to not run accross many conflicts against
other trees.

Luis