From: Arnd Bergmann <arnd@arndb.de>
To: Baoyou Xie <baoyou.xie@linaro.org>
Cc: "Deucher, Alexander" <alexander.deucher@amd.com>,
        Dave Airlie <airlied@linux.ie>, "Zhu, Rex" <Rex.Zhu@amd.com>,
        "Zhou, Jammy" <Jammy.Zhou@amd.com>,
        "Huang, JinHuiEric" <JinHuiEric.Huang@amd.com>,
        "StDenis, Tom" <tom.stdenis@amd.com>,
        "Edward O'Callaghan" <funfunctor@folklore1984.net>,
        "Prosyak, Vitaly" <vitaly.prosyak@amd.com>,
        "Yang, Eric" <eric.yang2@amd.com>, "Yang, Young" <Young.Yang@amd.com>,
        Huang Rui <ray.huang@amd.com>,
        Dan Carpenter <dan.carpenter@oracle.com>,
        "Cui, Flora" <Flora.Cui@amd.com>,
        Nils =?ISO-8859-1?Q?Wallm=E9nius?= <nils.wallmenius@gmail.com>,
        "Liu, Monk" <Monk.Liu@amd.com>, Qingqing.Wang@amd.com,
        "Min, Frank" <Frank.Min@amd.com>,
        dri-devel <dri-devel@lists.freedesktop.org>,
        Linux Kernel Mailing List <linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org>,
        xie.baoyou@zte.com.cn, han.fei@zte.com.cn, tang.qiang007@zte.com.cn
Subject: Re: [PATCH] drm/amd/powerplay: mark symbols static where possible
Date: Tue, 25 Oct 2016 10:15:06 +0200
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On Tuesday, October 25, 2016 10:31:21 AM CEST Baoyou Xie wrote:
> On 25 October 2016 at 04:51, Arnd Bergmann <arnd@arndb.de> wrote:
> > On Saturday, October 22, 2016 4:56:22 PM CEST Baoyou Xie wrote:
> > The function has no callers, so the easiest way would be to remove it
> > entirely, but it's possible that there are plans to add users soon.
> >
> > It was assumed that this function will be used soon, so this patch remains
> it.
> if it still not be used in 4.10, then we can remove it.
> is it right?

There is no such rule in general, it's up to the maintainer and
it depends on the specific reason for why the function ended up
being unused in the first place.

However, we can expect the maintainer to come up with some solution
to address the warning. Possible options include:

- calling the function from where it was meant to be used
- removing the function
- adding __maybe_unused
- adding an #if 0

I have not looked at this specific example and do not know
which of them would be appropriate here. If you look at the
output of 'git log -p drivers/gpu/drm/amd/amdgpu/../powerplay/hwmgr/smu7_hwmgr.c'
you might find it out yourself.

	Arnd