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From: Ingo Molnar on 28 Apr 2010 09:40

* Frederic Weisbecker <fweisbec(a)gmail.com> wrote:

> [...]
>
> That said, once we reach that point with 4 users of bkl remaining, may be
> that will be time to buy such hardware for a symbolic $1 in obscure places
> and do the tests. Or just git-rm if we are too lazy.

Precisely. Note that the actual value of BKL-covered code shrinks every time
we push the BKL out of commonly used code.

So even if there's still usage sites around, there will be a point where it
makes sense to just desupport it or do a final, crude conversion. If there are
no active users who are willing to help us debug potential bugs then there's
frankly no value in us being just as careful with those drivers as we are with
other, more commonly used code.

For the rest, lockdep & softlockup detector will be plenty enough to debug any
bugs that may slip through - just like you did it with ReiserFS.

Ingo
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From: Arnd Bergmann on 28 Apr 2010 10:10
On Tuesday 27 April 2010, Ingo Molnar wrote:
> * Arnd Bergmann <arnd(a)arndb.de> wrote:
>
> > On Monday 26 April 2010, Ingo Molnar wrote:
> > > This could be done all automated for a hundred old drivers if need to be.
> > > There would be no bkl_ioctl's left.
> >
> > I don't think it can be fully automated. [...]
>
> Corner cases are not a problem as long as the risk of them going unnoticed is
> lower than the risk of a manual conversion introducing bugs.

I actually support your idea of automatic conversion of modules in the
way you lined out, but would not want to apply it to the entire kernel
at once, but only to modules that were manually inspected to be safe for
doing this.

This minimizes both the risk from corner cases and the risk from manual
conversion.

Arnd
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