30 Dec
2024
30 Dec
'24
11:48 a.m.
On Tue, Dec 24, 2024 at 10:56 PM jim stephens via cctalk <
cctalk(a)classiccmp.org> wrote:
The kernel is large, but most of the "complication" is straightforward
within the discipline available in the kernel structure.
The majority of LoC in "the Linux kernel" as most people think about it
(i.e. the tarball you download) are device drivers. Much of the rest is
the machine dependent layer (/arch). Neither change the 'complexity' of
Linux (though they represent their own complexity). I recall at one point
a decade or so ago those two hierarchies amounted to significantly more
than 75% of the LoC. The actual '/kernel' dir at that time contained
something like 250K LoC (tho that didn't include a lot of things we'd
consider kernel code like various filesystems and networking).
KJ