A senior Linux developer has been working alone to make the platform faster and more efficient by fixing a chronic system failure. Ingo Molnar created the Fast Kernel Headers project, which aims to clean up and rework the hierarchy of dependencies on Linux kernel headers.
Today, the heart of Linux has about 10,000 header files (header) with hierarchies include/ and arch/*/include. While this was effective early in the system’s life, today this structure would have turned into a “tricky and painful” set of cross-dependencies — affectionately dubbed by the developer as “Dependency Hell” (or Dependency Hell).
Molnar believes that this cleanup would result in the modification of 2,200 commits in the kernel source code. An investigation he conducted revealed that the system is much heavier than in the beginning, which is not surprising given its age and constant improvements.
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This is usually because new code emerges to add extra functionality and the old ones are not always completely deleted, resulting in system bloating and slowdowns. In the case of headers in excess, it means more time to carry out the crossing of dependencies and this directly impacts the performance of the machines and the work of the software creators.
in addition to commits that would be changed, the changes proposed by the professional should affect almost all current Linux programs, which could extend the work to much more than the 25 subtrees and the 2,200 adjustments. This would be because the tree fast headers modifies more than half of all existing kernel source files, so there would be widespread impact on system operation.
Linux kernel cleaning already pays off
Molnar’s work started alone and today it is starting to show positive responses. According to the dev, the tree of fast headers showed a performance gain between 50 and 80% when compiling the kernel on supported architectures, depending on the configuration used. “This is a huge step forward in terms of Linux kernel compilation efficiency and performance,” he explained.
The final estimate would impact 25,000 files, 178,000 inserts and 74,000 deletions from the core Linux code, making Molnar’s project the biggest single feature announcement in Linux history. Linux Kernel Mailing List — the traditional mailing list in which developers share their kernel improvements.
In practice, all these tweaks should have little impact on the end user’s routine as the change is deep in the code structure. Linux developers, however, would be able to compile faster than today, which would make the process of creating, improving, patching, and updating the beloved open source operating system easier.
