From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1756431AbZCOAl3 (ORCPT ); Sat, 14 Mar 2009 20:41:29 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S1752366AbZCOAlU (ORCPT ); Sat, 14 Mar 2009 20:41:20 -0400 Received: from terminus.zytor.com ([198.137.202.10]:54952 "EHLO terminus.zytor.com" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1752137AbZCOAlU (ORCPT ); Sat, 14 Mar 2009 20:41:20 -0400 Message-ID: <49BC4DB6.9070403@zytor.com> Date: Sat, 14 Mar 2009 17:37:10 -0700 From: "H. Peter Anvin" User-Agent: Thunderbird 2.0.0.14 (X11/20080501) MIME-Version: 1.0 To: Jeremy Fitzhardinge CC: Yinghai Lu , Linux Kernel Mailing List Subject: Re: Latest brk patchset References: <49BC413B.5020104@zytor.com> <49BC4CAC.202@goop.org> In-Reply-To: <49BC4CAC.202@goop.org> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org List-ID: X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Jeremy Fitzhardinge wrote: >> >> It really doesn't make much sense to me, and is more than a bit >> confusing given the symbols. > > Mostly because I knew that the bss would get mapped into the appropriate > phdr segment correctly, but I wasn't sure that another bss-like section > would be. It will; in fact if they are adjacent then ld will typically merge the PHDRs. > Also because historically the brk segment was just an > extension of the executable's bss, and its more or less the same too. An extension of, yes, but not a part of. > Is there any real benefit in putting it into another section? Well, the semantics are different; the .bss section is zeroed while the brk isn't, and the brk symbols don't necessarily point to the data associated with those particular symbols, unlike (of course) the bss. It's not a big issue, obviously, it just seems cleaner to me that way. -hpa -- H. Peter Anvin, Intel Open Source Technology Center I work for Intel. I don't speak on their behalf.