On Wed, Mar 9, 2011 at 8:02 AM, Ingo Molnar <mingo@xxxxxxx> wrote: > >> > This binutils change is breaking numerous upstream kernel builds (and is making >> > bisection with new binutils impossible) for no particular good reason: binutils >> > was capable to figure out the symbol name before this change. >> >> That is totally false. The old assembler just generates incorrect size and It >> couldn't read the programmer's mind to find the correct symbol name. > > Still it didnt make the kernel not build and it did not make the kernel not boot. It > at most confused some ELF symbol table - which the kernel does not need. > > So all i'm trying to point out to you is that you appear to be seeing the world in a > very binary way: 'broken' versus 'correct' and that it can be rather harmful if you > project that binary view on the real world that in reality is not binary but is > shades of grey. > > You are turning a benign ELF symbol table detail (that does not affect the kernel's > ability to boot/work) into a hard build breakage and bisection barrier, covering > hundreds of commits. The original assembler change didn't mention the bogus symbol name in error message, which is very unhelpful. I changed the assembler to print out the bogus symbol name in error message. It should be very trivial to identify the bogus kernel assembly codes. > I'm not denying that it's buggy code - I'm just asking you to *PLEASE* at minimum > acknowledge that surprise flag days that turn a before-benign condition into a fatal > build failure suck to everyone else outside your own little universe. > There is no way for assembler to know if a bug in input source code is "benign" or not. For assembler, a bug in input is a bug in input. Assembly programmers should appreciate this assembler change for helping him/her catch such bugs in his/her codes. -- H.J. -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-next" in the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
