"Fast Kernel Headers" aiming to eliminate "Dependency Hell" of Linux kernel --ZDNet Japan

notebook-laptop
14/04/2022
887 Views

Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols (Special to ZDNet.com) Translation Proofreading: Masaaki Murakami Yuko Nozaki

2022-01-12 08:30

Here's my content

Cleaning up code that has been modified over decades and has accumulated the mess of clutter is not a task for the weak. However, Ingo Molnar, a leader in Linux kernel development, is trying to maximize his power and restore order to the open source Linux kernel.

Linux source code reached 27.8 million lines in 2020. Since then, its scale has continued to grow. Linux, like any other software project that is 30 years old, has accumulated a significant amount of dirt in its source code over its long history. Molnar, a senior developer of the Linux kernel, has released the "Fast Kernel Headers" project as a result of months of work that was the first of its kind to solve this problem at a fundamental level.

What is the aim? The answer is nothing more than reorganizing and recreating the Linux kernel header hierarchy and header dependencies as a whole. There are many headers, or .h files, in Linux. Strictly speaking, there are about 10,000 major .h headers in the Linux kernel include / and arch / * / include / file hierarchies. "Over the last three decades, these headers have swelled into a complex and painful chunk of interdependence that we affectionately call'Dependency Hell'," Molnar said.

Under these circumstances, Molnar has proposed 2200 code fix commitments. This is a lot of commits! Why are there so many? By the end of 2020, when he launched the tidying project, he didn't realize that so much turmoil was lurking in the code. He wrote:

You need to log in to CNET_ID to view the following pages. Unless you log in once and make special settings, you can view articles without logging in for a certain period of time. You can easily register CNET_ID in about 1 minute, and you can also receive the latest information as an e-mail newsletter.

Read all ZDNet Japan articles by email every morning (free registration)

Apply for e-mail newsletter subscription