Messages in this thread | | | Date | Wed, 28 Jan 2009 20:47:05 +0000 | From | Alan Cox <> | Subject | Re: [PATCH 60/80] tty: extract the pty init time special cases |
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> So you are saying that if I merge my ptyx module into the kernel tree THEN > these > exports would be added? They would have to be, since I would still want
It would then seem reasonable to do so
> my > driver to be a module instead of statically linked with the kernel like > pty is.
Sure - although it might make more sense to add any neede features to the generic pty driver - hard to tell when you don't seem interested in discussing that.
> I think the fact that you had to "ask at the time what other PTY drivers > there > were" indicates that these symbols should have been simply exported to > avoid > any problems with out of tree PTY drivers.
The linux kernel doesn't carry extra symbols for out of tree drivers. Why should it - even keeping an index of them would be hard and it would be impossible to know which ones are in use. Plus they change regularly - the tty layer will change further soon for example, it's just having a settling in period before the next big changes.
> By not exporting these symbols it means that the Linux kernel is now > forcing > anyone who wants to develop a PTY type TTY driver to be merged into the > kernel > tree by not exporting these TTY functions. This doesn't seem very "open > and > flexible".
No you can provide the GPL symbol exports with the same patch as your pty driver. There are millions of Linux users and each unused EXPORT_SYMBOL costs memory to all those people - why should they carry that burden ?
Alan
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