On Mon, 7 Aug 2000, Bill Studenmund wrote:

> I don't think lkm's work the way you are thinking. In NetBSD, an LKM has
> access to ALL the symbols in the kernel, including all of the other
> function calls. When it is working right (or done right), an LKM even has
> access to symbols in other loaded lkm's.

Ah, but the question was, is it strictly necessary to have access to all
the symbols directly, or are 90+ percent of the calls to only a few
functions?


> The original proposal was to add something along the lines of
> __attribute__ ((long-call)) to the prototypes of functions outside the lkm
> so that the lkm's calls used a long-style jump or branch rather than a
> short one. As we open up all of the functions in the kernel to LKM's, that
> means that ALL of the prototypes need to have this __attribute__
> ((long-call)) added. Only when we're compiling an lkm. :-)

True, but it seems like that's going to bload the headers a lot.


> I think adding something like -mlong-call and __attribute__ ((short-call))
> would be the most efficient thing. :-)

Agreed.  Makes a lot of sense to go at it from that direction.


David

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