[U-Boot-Users] Why are some global vars part of the image, and some not?

[Timur Tabi <timur@freescale.com>]

Wolfgang Denk wrote:

> I'm not exactly sure what you  mean  by  the  "global  vars"  in  the
> Subject  line.  The declaration you show here says "static". This may
> or may not be what you mean.

To me, a variable defined outside of a function is a global variable, 
regardless as to whether it's "static" or not.  Technically, these variables 
are static globals, but I don't think removing the "static" would change what 
I'm seeing.  Would it?

>> As you can see, I defined two static volatile global vars: i2c_bus_num and 
>> i2c_dev.
> 
> Yes, and one of these is initialized with non-zero values (so it will
> go to the data segment), while the other is not (so it will go to
> bss).

I realized that about two minutes after I posted my email, which is why I 
posted a follow-up.

> THis is perfectly OK. Just check the variables after U-Boot has  been
> relocated to RAM and BSS has been initialized.

I can't.  This code is used to initialize the I2C bus, which is used to 
initialize SPD on DDR, which is obviously done before U-Boot is relocated.

These variables contain the I2C bus number.  On some boards, SPD is on bus 0, 
on some they're on bus 1.  So the compile-time initializer needs to be the 
right bus.

(An alternative would be to change i2c_read() and i2c_write() to take a bus 
number as a parameter, but that would change hundreds of files).

-- 
Timur Tabi
Linux Kernel Developer @ Freescale