On Fri, 2014-12-19 at 00:33 +0100, Thomas Gleixner wrote:

On Wed, 17 Dec 2014, Joe Perches wrote:

quoted

It seems like early_printk can be configured into
a few architectures but also appear not to be used.

$ git grep -w "early_printk"

...

quoted

These seem to the only uses:

... 

quoted

So blackfin, m68k, and mips seems to have it possible to enable,
but also don't appear at first glance to use it,

Hint: CONFIG_EARLY_PRINTK covers far more than early_printk()

I know this.

Note also I didn't specify CONFIG_EARLY_PRINTK,
just early_printk.
 

quoted

Is early_printk really used by these architectures?
Should it be removed?

Sure, if you have a good reason to remove working functionality.

Unused.

Ideally, all direct early_printk() uses would go away.
This would just be a starting point to minimize code.