On Wed, Sep 25, 2024 at 11:38:29PM +0000, Matthew Maurer wrote:

Adds a new format for MODVERSIONS which stores each field in a separate
ELF section. This initially adds support for variable length names, but
could later be used to add additional fields to MODVERSIONS in a
backwards compatible way if needed. Any new fields will be ignored by
old user tooling, unlike the current format where user tooling cannot
tolerate adjustments to the format (for example making the name field
longer).

Since PPC munges its version records to strip leading dots, we reproduce
the munging for the new format. Other architectures do not appear to
have architecture-specific usage of this information.

Signed-off-by: Matthew Maurer <redacted>

I'm all for the ELF validation work so far, all that was nice, thanks
for all that tidying up. This however is not considering when we really
need all this at all, and not making it specific to the build times when
such things are needed. That is, yes I'd like to see the need for this
clearly explicitly defined through Kconfig, a *select FOO_FEATURE* for
when this is needed. No need to extend a module with bloat if we don't
need it, likewise if a kernel was built without needing those things,
why bloat the modules with the extra information?

  Luis