tree c386f3aa4af94bb7d24ddb18b51f90bcb9a4d599
parent acf02d23b96efa92e7cff05987122ceeb37dd075
author David Brownell <david-b@pacbell.net> 1163748527 -0800
committer Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@suse.de> 1165013522 -0800

Driver core: platform_driver_probe(), can save codespace

This defines a new platform_driver_probe() method allowing the driver's
probe() method, and its support code+data, to safely live in __init
sections for typical system configurations.

Many system-on-chip processors could benefit from this API, to the tune
of recovering hundreds to thousands of bytes per driver.  That's memory
which is currently wasted holding code which can never be called after
system startup, yet can not be removed.   It can't be removed because of
the linkage requirement that pointers to init section code (like, ideally,
probe support) must not live in other sections (like driver method tables)
after those pointers would be invalid.

Signed-off-by: David Brownell <dbrownell@users.sourceforge.net>
Signed-off-by: Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@suse.de>