Re: Status of function-sections work?

Re: Status of function-sections work?

[Denys Vlasenko]

On Monday 06 June 2011 03:15, Josh Triplett wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> I found your work in 2010 on using function-sections and data-sections
> to eliminate unused code in the kernel.  I'd like to make use of this
> work to try to build an extremely space-constrained kernel.
> 
> It looks like a few of your patches made it into the kernel, but most of
> the linker script changes don't seem to have made it in.  I wanted to
> find out the status of this work.  Do you still have this working?  Do
> you have versions of your patches for current Linux?

parisc uses ^ in some identifiers. Therefore we need something like
[A-Za-z0-9_$^]* in linker script. This wasn't working with GNU ld -
^ is not a valid char for pattern. Use of more general [!.]*
was also impossible - ! is not a valid char too.

Therefore I asked binutils people to fix this (they agreed) and
decided to wait for a fixed binutils to be released.


> Have you considered re-submitting?

Yes, I need to do this...


-- 
vda

Re: Status of function-sections work?

[Josh Triplett]

On Tue, Jun 07, 2011 at 10:11:15AM +0200, Denys Vlasenko wrote:
> On Monday 06 June 2011 03:15, Josh Triplett wrote:
> > Hello,
> > 
> > I found your work in 2010 on using function-sections and data-sections
> > to eliminate unused code in the kernel.  I'd like to make use of this
> > work to try to build an extremely space-constrained kernel.
> > 
> > It looks like a few of your patches made it into the kernel, but most of
> > the linker script changes don't seem to have made it in.  I wanted to
> > find out the status of this work.  Do you still have this working?  Do
> > you have versions of your patches for current Linux?
> 
> parisc uses ^ in some identifiers. Therefore we need something like
> [A-Za-z0-9_$^]* in linker script. This wasn't working with GNU ld -
> ^ is not a valid char for pattern. Use of more general [!.]*
> was also impossible - ! is not a valid char too.
> 
> Therefore I asked binutils people to fix this (they agreed) and
> decided to wait for a fixed binutils to be released.

Makes sense.  Thanks for the explanation and status.

Do you know if the fix has gone into binutils, either in a release or
the latest snapshot from version control?  If not, does a patch exist?

- Josh Triplett

Re: Status of function-sections work?

[Denys Vlasenko]

On Tue, Jun 7, 2011 at 10:43 AM, Josh Triplett <josh@joshtriplett.org> wrote:
> On Tue, Jun 07, 2011 at 10:11:15AM +0200, Denys Vlasenko wrote:
>> On Monday 06 June 2011 03:15, Josh Triplett wrote:
>> > Hello,
>> >
>> > I found your work in 2010 on using function-sections and data-sections
>> > to eliminate unused code in the kernel.  I'd like to make use of this
>> > work to try to build an extremely space-constrained kernel.
>> >
>> > It looks like a few of your patches made it into the kernel, but most of
>> > the linker script changes don't seem to have made it in.  I wanted to
>> > find out the status of this work.  Do you still have this working?  Do
>> > you have versions of your patches for current Linux?
>>
>> parisc uses ^ in some identifiers. Therefore we need something like
>> [A-Za-z0-9_$^]* in linker script. This wasn't working with GNU ld -
>> ^ is not a valid char for pattern. Use of more general [!.]*
>> was also impossible - ! is not a valid char too.
>>
>> Therefore I asked binutils people to fix this (they agreed) and
>> decided to wait for a fixed binutils to be released.
>
> Makes sense.  Thanks for the explanation and status.
>
> Do you know if the fix has gone into binutils, either in a release or
> the latest snapshot from version control?  If not, does a patch exist?

Yes, latest released binutils has the fix.
-- 
vda