[Buildroot] kernel image size depends on toolchain?

[Andreas Kuehn <Andreas.Kuehn@gin.de>]

Right from the .config file....

BR2_BINUTILS_VERSION="2.18"
BR2_EXTRA_BINUTILS_CONFIG_OPTIONS=""

I suppose version 2.18 is the "old" version?
Meanwhile, I changed to version 2.18.50.0.1 and did a complete rebuild 
with a well known result:

Image Type:   ARM Linux Kernel Image (uncompressed)
Data Size:    4528100 Bytes = 4421.97 kB = 4.32 MB


I don't know where that commit you mentioned has gone to (where does 
that 1e621a8e3752367d4aae78a8ab00a18fb2793f34 belong to). Is it the 
kernel tree or the binutils and finally which version?






Peter Korsgaard wrote:
>>>>>> "Andreas" == Andreas Kuehn <Andreas.Kuehn@gin.de> writes:
> 
>  Andreas> Here it comes...
>  Andreas>                                           old        actual
>  Andreas> -------------------------------------------------------------
>  Andreas> linux/System.map                          695909      695917
>  Andreas> linux/vmlinux                           27876137    27875949
>  Andreas> linux/vmlinux.o                         46429585    46507157
>  Andreas> linux/arch/arm/boot/Image                2896464  3224138320
> 
> So Image is around 3G. There afaik was a problem in arch/arm about
> some binutils versions creating huge images because of a new section.
> What binutils version are you using (old and new)?
> 
> Ahh, this seems to be it:
> 
> commit 1e621a8e3752367d4aae78a8ab00a18fb2793f34
> Author: Lennert Buytenhek <buytenh@wantstofly.org>
> Date:   Fri Oct 12 14:38:54 2007 +0100
> 
>     [ARM] 4600/1: fix kernel build failure with build-id-supporting binutils
>     
>     Newer versions of binutils support --build-id, which adds an ELF
>     note section called ".note.gnu.build-id" to the output.  On the ARM
>     kernel build, because there is no explicit mention of this section
>     in the shipped ld script, this section is placed at vaddr 0x00000000
>     (whereas the normal kernel text/data typically starts at vaddr
>     0xc0008000), causing the output of objcopy (Image) to produce a 3G+
>     file.
>     
>     This patch makes objcopy strip the .note.gnu.build-id section from
>     the Image file along with all other note sections, which fixes the
>     build.
>     
>     Signed-off-by: Lennert Buytenhek <buytenh@wantstofly.org>
>     Signed-off-by: Russell King <rmk+kernel@arm.linux.org.uk>
>