Patent ID: 7954086

Claim:
A method for creating a self-describing kernel module, comprising: expressing data describing a module in a modmeta file format, the data including a module name, a module version, a module type, and a module description which includes one or more of a text description, an indication of supported states, an indication of supported load times, an indication of dependencies with respect to other modules, a description of export and import interfaces, a description of tunable parameters, and a description of initialization functions; creating a C language source file, comprising translating the expressed data into a series of C language data structures, wherein the data structures comprise contiguous, variant length C data structures without embedded pointers, and wherein the series of C language data structures comprises the C language source file; compiling the C language source file into machine-readable form; and linking the machine-readable form of the C language source file with object files containing the module's code.