[U-Boot] Query on CONFIG_SYS_THUMB_BUILD

Simon Glass
2014-11-15T01:56:07Z

Hi Albert,

On 14 November 2014 08:26, Albert ARIBAUD <albert.u.boot@aribaud.net> wrote:
> Hello Simon,
>
> On Fri, 14 Nov 2014 07:01:59 -0700, Simon Glass <sjg@chromium.org>
> wrote:
>> Hi Victor,
>>
>> On 13 November 2014 09:29, Victor Ascroft <victorascroft@gmail.com> wrote:
>> > Hello,
>> >
>> > I am working with a Cortex A5 Freescale Vybrid Processor. Since a thumb build leads to a saving of almost 1 MB for my u-boot image and consequently to faster serial downloads I have been looking at this. Currently enabling this option leads to a hang.
>> >
>> > After some debugging I have narrowed the place of hang to "ldr pc, =board_init_r" in arch/arm/lib/crt0.S. My debugging procedure was to put a branch to a small function which just printed a small message with puts, just before the ldr instruction and then a printing a small message with puts just at the start of board_init_r in common/board_r.c . For a non thumb build, the two messages get printed and I can boot to the u-boot prompt. For a thumb build, only the first message before the ldr instruction gets printed.
>> >
>> > In crt0.S
>> > bl debug_print
>> > ldr pc, =board_init_r
>> >
>> > In board_init_r
>> > puts("In board_init_r\n"); // Right at start
>> >
>> > void debug_print(void)
>> > {
>> > // Defined in board file
>> > puts("Debug print\n");
>> > }
>> >
>> > My assembly knowledge is limited and after some consultation with a senior colleague, he told me things to check.
>> >
>> > An object dump of the crt0.o shows a branch to an even address. For thumb, this is expected to be odd. To just try out, I did a change as below
>> > ldr r3, =board_init_r
>> > add r3, #1
>> > bx r3
>> >
>> > No change with this. My expectation was the compiler/linker/assembler would take care of the requirements, with the CONFIG_SYS_THUMB_BUILD. Frankly speaking I am not sure if this is the complete issue or only a part of it. I have seen patches with regards to OMAP send in by Aneesh V, which made changes of the form .type fn_name, %function to all the low level assembly functions, but, I couldn't dig up much more or variants thereof. Basically, from what I understand, this takes care of specifying .thumb_func for a thumb function or so to speak.
>> >
>> > Any pointers?
>
> Victor,
>
> In addition to Simon's question below on the toolchain, I would like to
> know which commit you're trying to build.
>
>> I tried this on a peach_pi (Samsung Chromebook 2 13") and it worked OK
>> for me. The code sequence you refer to came out as below for me.
>>
>> 23e01e10 <clbss_l>:
>> 23e01e10: e1500001 cmp r0, r1
>> 23e01e14: 35802000 strcc r2, [r0]
>> 23e01e18: 32800004 addcc r0, r0, #4
>> 23e01e1c: 3afffffb bcc 23e01e10 <clbss_l>
>> 23e01e20: fa000dec blx 23e055d8 <coloured_LED_init>
>> 23e01e24: fb000deb blx 23e055da <red_led_on>
>> 23e01e28: e1a00009 mov r0, r9
>> 23e01e2c: e5991030 ldr r1, [r9, #48] ; 0x30
>> 23e01e30: e59ff008 ldr pc, [pc, #8] ; 23e01e40
>> <clbss_l+0x30>
>> 23e01e34: 02073800 .word 0x02073800
>> 23e01e38: 23e41eb0 .word 0x23e41eb0
>> 23e01e3c: 23e77bf0 .word 0x23e77bf0
>> 23e01e40: 23e057a9 .word 0x23e057a9
>>
>> The 'ldr pc' line is loading from 23e01e40 which does have an odd address.
>>
>> What toolchain are you using? I tried with gcc 4.8.2 - including
>> linaro's 2013.10 release.
>>
>> In arch/arm/cpu/armv7/config.mk there is a fallback to armv5 from
>> armv7-a, and this may cause it to generate Thumb code instead of Thumb
>> 2. But you should get errors if that happens.
>>
>> It's hard to debug with such limited visibility. But if I put a puts()
>> at the start of board_init_r(), I see it on the serial console.
>
> Simon,
>
> I believe you've built crt0.S for ARM, not Thumb.

Yes, but I suspect that is a function of the build system. I checked
the rest of U-Boot and most of it (including SPL) is Thumb 2. I
suppose we could use Thumb 2 for crt0.S if all the instructions are
supported.

Regards,
Simon