Re: [PATCH] automatic initcalls

[Oliver Xymoron]

On Sat, 27 Jul 2002, Linus Torvalds wrote:

> On Sat, 27 Jul 2002, Jeff Garzik wrote:
> >
> > I've always preferred a system where one simply lists dependencies [as
> > you describe above], and some program actually does the hard work of
> > chasing down all the initcall dependency checking and ordering.
> >
> > Linus has traditionally poo-pooed this so I haven't put any work towards
> > it...
>
> I don't hate the notion, but at the same time every time it comes up I
> feel that there are reasonably simple ways to just avoid the ordering
> problems.

The 'simple ways' are only simpler because they're taking advantage of
pre-existing (and undocumented) implicit ordering. The explicit
dependencies are probably less complex on the whole as it lets you take
out a ton of per-subsystem conditional cruft and replace it with a couple
lines of dependency info.

Given that sizeof(dependency info)==sizeof(missing documentation of
dependencies), it's clear that sizeof(dependency info + support + script)
< sizeof(current ordering code + conditional cruft + missing
documentation).

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