Re: ARM undefined symbols. Again.

Daniel Jacobowitz
2005-02-25T22:04:30Z

On Fri, Feb 25, 2005 at 08:23:49PM +0000, Russell King wrote:
> On Fri, Feb 25, 2005 at 11:59:01AM -0800, Linus Torvalds wrote:
> > On Fri, 25 Feb 2005, Russell King wrote:
> > > So, what's happening about this?
> >
> > Btw, is there any real reason why the ARM _tools_ can't just be fixed? I
> > don't see why this isn't a tools bug?
>
> It is a tools bug. But the issue is that *all* versions of binutils
> currently available which are kernel-capable (since the inclusion of
> the kbuild .incbin requirement on binutils) have this bug, with the
> exception of maybe CVS versions.
>
> We can't say "you must use the current CVS binutils to build the
> kernel" because that's not a sane toolchain base to build products
> on.
>
> I've been wanting to see a version of binutils released pretty damn
> quick so I can say "kernel only builds with latest toolchain" but
> I suspect even that's going to be seen as being unreasonable.

Not sure who you asked, but since I run the binutils releases...

I am fairly positive that this bug has been fixed in the binutils CVS:

2004-07-02 Nick Clifton <nickc@redhat.com>

* config/tc-arm.c (md_apply_fix3:BFD_RELOC_ARM_IMMEDIATE): Do not
allow values which have come from undefined symbols.
Always consider this fixup to have been processed as a reloc
cannot be generated for it.

I know several ARM kernel developers who are using tools with this
patch applied already. Also, I anticipate the release of binutils 2.16
including the fix in about a month.

> And yes, the toolchain peoples point of view is "fix the kernel".

Huh? Obviously the kernel isn't broken, unless you're talking about
the kallsyms checks now.

--
Daniel Jacobowitz
CodeSourcery, LLC