Re: [PATCH] binfmt_misc.c, kernel-2.4.12

[Alexander Viro]

On Mon, 22 Oct 2001, Keith Owens wrote:

> >Erm... Keith, I might be misreading the source, but... Shouldn't the
> >information like "block major $FOO is in module $BAR" live in
> >/lib/modules/*/* ?
> 
> Historically the mapping of device majors to module or binary format
> type to module was coded into modutils, via util/alias.h.  That was a
> mistake, it should have used the same technique as pci, isapnp, parport
> etc., each module has a table that defines what it handles and modutils
> extracts the data directly from the modules.  Developers have changed
> the names of their modules and now we have hard coded module names in
> modutils that do not match the names used by some kernels.  Hindsight
> is wonderful!
> 
> In modutils 2.5 I will get rid of all the hard coded entries in
> util/alias.h.  Instead each module will define what it supports,
> including any special commands to be run when the module is loaded or
> unloaded.  Much easier for everyone and far more flexible.

Heh.  OK, so you've stopped me in the middle of writing RFC that proposes
addition of
MODULE_CONF(string)
that would put that string into separate section and making modules_install
dump these sections, feed them through s/_NAME_/`basename $module`/ and
cat them into defaults file that would go into $INSTALL_MOD_PATH.
MODULES_BLKDEV(), MODULE_LDISC(), etc. would be trivial wrappers around that.

Looks like the thing you mentioned would make quite a few people happy.
Might be worth doing in 2.4...