Re: [PATCH v3 1/3] Make section names compatible with -ffunction-sections -fdata-sections

[Paul Mundt <lethal@linux-sh.org>]

On Sat, Apr 25, 2009 at 10:10:38PM -0400, Tim Abbott wrote:
> On Fri, 24 Apr 2009, Sam Ravnborg wrote:
> 
> > This patch touches far too many files.
> > We should try to work out a method so we are in better control
> > of the section names, so renaming in the end is a simple patch
> > touching only a few files.
> 
> OK, I'm now planning to implement this approach.
> 
> > > -.section .text.head, "ax"
> > > +.section .text..head, "ax"
> > 
> > Use __HEAD (from include/linux/init.h)
> > Same goes for all other uses of .text.head.
> 
> I notice that __HEAD uses .head.text, while some architectures use 
> .text.head.  It looks like this is just an inconsistency across 
> architectures that will be removed as a consequence of this cleanup work 
> (no architecture uses both .head.text and .text.head).
> 
The use of .text.head is quite intentional. See
f8657e1b55901e6c227094258d1fa3642fa242bd for starters. Most of the rest
of the platforms that switched did so for section mismatch avoidance
reasons, those that kept .head.text presumably did not hit these
mismatches or simply didn't care.