The new module loader
Linus has stated that the October 31 feature freeze date was a deadline for
submissions to him, not for actual merging. He has been restrained in what
he has merged since then, but one significant change that will show up in
2.5.48 is the new module loader by Rusty Russell. This patch was covered
briefly here back in September. As of this
writing, the code that has been merged is missing a few little features,
like modversions, module parameters, module license checking, and device
table support (which is needed to make hotplugging work). Fixes for these
omissions are promised for the near future.
Meanwhile, the new code is simpler for both the kernel and user space; it
is also safer in a number of ways. It does, however, require a new set of
module utilities to work; these can be obtained as a source
tarball from Rusty's site.