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Date:   Fri, 15 Jul 2022 11:56:01 -0500
From:   Bjorn Helgaas <helgaas@kernel.org>
To:     Dmitry Baryshkov <dmitry.baryshkov@linaro.org>
Cc:     Stanimir Varbanov <svarbanov@mm-sol.com>,
        Johan Hovold <johan+linaro@kernel.org>,
        Lorenzo Pieralisi <lorenzo.pieralisi@arm.com>,
        Rob Herring <robh@kernel.org>,
        Krzysztof =?utf-8?Q?Wilczy=C5=84ski?= <kw@linux.com>,
        Bjorn Helgaas <bhelgaas@google.com>,
        Andy Gross <agross@kernel.org>,
        Bjorn Andersson <bjorn.andersson@linaro.org>,
        linux-pci@vger.kernel.org, linux-arm-msm@vger.kernel.org,
        linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org
Subject: Re: [PATCH] PCI: qcom: Add support for modular builds
Message-ID: <20220715165601.GA1139849@bhelgaas>
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On Thu, Jul 14, 2022 at 04:05:41PM +0300, Dmitry Baryshkov wrote:
> On 14/07/2022 15:19, Stanimir Varbanov wrote:
> > Please take a look why we made it built-in first [1].
> > 
> > If arguments there are still valid I don't see why to make it a module
> > again.
> > 
> > [1] https://lkml.org/lkml/2016/8/24/694
> 
> It looks like there is a move to make all non-essential drivers buildable as
> modules. For example, the Kirin, dra7xx, Meson PCI controllers are now
> buildable as modules. So I think we can follow that and allow building the
> pcie-qcom as a module.

IIUC the arguments in [1] are that:

  - Kconfig is bool, so it can't be built as a module
  - there's no sensible use case for unbind

Those described the situation at the time, and there's no point in
having .remove() and using module_platform_driver() if Kconfig is
bool.

But they don't seem like arguments for why the driver couldn't be
*made* modular.

I think drivers *should* be modular unless there's a technical reason
they can't be.

Bjorn