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Date:   Tue, 27 Apr 2021 07:29:07 +0100
From:   Christoph Hellwig <hch@infradead.org>
To:     Shreeya Patel <shreeya.patel@collabora.com>
Cc:     tytso@mit.edu, adilger.kernel@dilger.ca, jaegeuk@kernel.org,
        chao@kernel.org, krisman@collabora.com, ebiggers@google.com,
        drosen@google.com, ebiggers@kernel.org, yuchao0@huawei.com,
        linux-ext4@vger.kernel.org, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org,
        linux-f2fs-devel@lists.sourceforge.net,
        linux-fsdevel@vger.kernel.org, kernel@collabora.com,
        andre.almeida@collabora.com
Subject: Re: [PATCH v8 4/4] fs: unicode: Add utf8 module and a unicode layer
Message-ID: <20210427062907.GA1564326@infradead.org>
References: <20210423205136.1015456-1-shreeya.patel@collabora.com>
 <20210423205136.1015456-5-shreeya.patel@collabora.com>
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On Sat, Apr 24, 2021 at 02:21:36AM +0530, Shreeya Patel wrote:
> utf8data.h_shipped has a large database table which is an auto-generated
> decodification trie for the unicode normalization functions.
> We can avoid carrying this large table in the kernel unless it is required
> by the filesystem during boot process.
> 
> Hence, make UTF-8 encoding loadable by converting it into a module and
> also add built-in UTF-8 support option for compiling it into the
> kernel whenever required by the filesystem.

The way this is implemement looks rather awkward.

Given that the large memory usage is for a data table and not for code,
why not treat is as a firmware blob and load it using request_firmware?