From mboxrd@z Thu Jan  1 00:00:00 1970
From: hector@marcansoft.com (Hector Martin)
Date: Wed, 24 Feb 2010 16:20:18 +0100
Subject: [PATCH] Clean up ARM compressed loader
In-Reply-To: <20100224110353.GA15105@n2100.arm.linux.org.uk>
References: <1266933437-4876-1-git-send-email-hector@marcansoft.com>	<20100224084259.GA8068@pengutronix.de>	<4B84F0F6.40902@marcansoft.com>
	<20100224110353.GA15105@n2100.arm.linux.org.uk>
Message-ID: <4B8543B2.4030004@marcansoft.com>
To: linux-arm-kernel@lists.infradead.org
List-Id: linux-arm-kernel.lists.infradead.org

Russell King - ARM Linux wrote:
> It does work with the previous version of the decompressor.

Sure, at this point in time. The broken code is still the loader, not
the new decompressor. If a GCC update had been the culprit, it wouldn't
be GCC's fault. The fact remains that the behavior is undefined and
(with current GCC versions) requires carefully crafting the resulting C
code in order to get reasonable behavior. I don't think you can
reasonably require that a generic descompressor be maintained by others
with care for compatibility with this hack; someone would have to police
changes for potential issues, and you still have a decent chance of
getting breakage if GCC decides to change its behavior some day. I'd say
fixing the loader to not require this undefined behavior is a
considerably better long-term solution.

> I noticed that you did not reply to my previous email on this subject,
> are you intentionally ignoring my responses?

You had a valid point which I hadn't considered (running ROM images from
RAM), so I figured I'd give addressing that a shot before going into
discussion mode.

-- 
Hector Martin (hector at marcansoft.com)
Public Key: http://www.marcansoft.com/marcan.asc