What is __init?

[Joy Sun]

Thanks!

J.

On Sun, Feb 6, 2011 at 10:52 PM, Prabhu nath <gprabhunath at gmail.com> wrote:

> __init is a qualifier to a function or initialized data and a hint to the
> linker to place all these
> code and data in a seperate section in the object file, so that once these
> functions are executed, memory space occupied by these code and data will be
> freed.
>
> It is the onus on the Kernel programmer to decide which functions/data to
> be marked as __init.
> For Eg. the init functions of a driver module, in most cases will be
> executed only once and no other functions will invoke this init function.
> Thus, init function will be the right candidate to be marked as __init.
>
> http://lxr.linux.no/#linux+v2.6.37/include/linux/init.h
>
> Regards,
> Prabhu
>
>
> On Mon, Feb 7, 2011 at 12:11 PM, Joy Sun <joy2sun127 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Hi,
>>
>> I am totally newbie for kernel device driver, and starting to learn.
>>
>> When I see a driver code, I found __init. For example, static int __init
>> xxxx(struct platform_device *pdev)
>>
>> I understand "static" and "int", but what is __init?
>>
>> -J.
>>
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>>
>>
>
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