Re: [PATCH] leds: provide helper to register "leds-gpio" devices

[Russell King - ARM Linux <linux@arm.linux.org.uk>]

On Tue, Apr 19, 2011 at 04:19:13PM -0700, Andrew Morton wrote:
> On Tue, 5 Apr 2011 17:33:39 +0100
> Russell King - ARM Linux <linux@arm.linux.org.uk> wrote:
> 
> > On Tue, Apr 05, 2011 at 10:37:35AM +0200, Uwe Kleine-K__nig wrote:
> > > +struct platform_device *__init gpio_led_register_device(
> > > +		const struct gpio_led_platform_data *pdata);
> > 
> > Please don't add __init annotations to declarations.
> 
> Reasons?

It's noise.

> A year or so ago we had to *add* an __init to a declaration, because
> one architecture was generating a short-mode-addressing relative branch
> to the callee, assuming the target was in the same section as the call
> site.  When the linker went to resolve the branch, it discovered that
> the target was in fact in a different section and was too far away to
> be able to use the short-mode addressing.  IIRC, that architecture was
> arm.

I'm not aware of ARM ever requiring that.  If it was, we'd have to add
a heck of a lot of those annotations.  And those annotations don't tell
the compiler that it might be far away.

We _do_ have a problem if someone decides to include a big ramdisk or
initramfs image in the discarded section, which is something I have a
patch kicking around to completely change the vmlinux layout to resolve.
That's taking something of a low priority at the moment though as we've
been turned upside down by Linus...