On Thu, 2 Jan 2025 11:30:12 -0800 Linus Torvalds <torvalds@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > Please just do this by sorting non-existent functions at the end, > instead of just zeroing them out. > > That makes the mcount_loc table dense in valid entries. We could then > just rewrite the size of the table (or just add a variable containing > the size, if you don't want to change ELF metadata - but you're > already sorting the table, so why not?) Well, I tried to move the __start_mcount_loc, but it appears that changing the symbol value *after* the linking phase does nothing :-p The references to it have already been resolved. The Elf_Rel* will do the updates from then on, and to read those, becomes architecture dependent. I guess the next thing I could do is to create a "skip" variable that can be modified, and we can skip X entries in the start_mcount_loc. As the start_mcount_loc and stop_mcount_loc (which determines the size of the table) cannot be modified in an architecture independent way. -- Steve