Ok, with Segher's help I've been playing with his patch ontop of bleeding edge gcc 9 and here are my observations. Please double-check me for booboos so that they can be addressed while there's time. So here's what I see ontop of 4.19-rc7: First marked the alternative asm() as inline and undeffed the "inline" keyword. I need to do that because of the funky games we do with "inline" redefinitions in include/linux/compiler_types.h. And Segher hinted at either doing: asm volatile inline(... or asm volatile __inline__(... but both "inline" variants are defined as macros in that file. Which means we either need to #undef inline before using it in asm() or come up with something cleverer. Anyway, did this: --- diff --git a/arch/x86/include/asm/alternative.h b/arch/x86/include/asm/alternative.h index 4cd6a3b71824..7c0639087da7 100644 --- a/arch/x86/include/asm/alternative.h +++ b/arch/x86/include/asm/alternative.h @@ -165,11 +165,13 @@ static inline int alternatives_text_reserved(void *start, void *end) * For non barrier like inlines please define new variants * without volatile and memory clobber. */ + +#undef inline #define alternative(oldinstr, newinstr, feature) \ - asm volatile (ALTERNATIVE(oldinstr, newinstr, feature) : : : "memory") + asm volatile inline(ALTERNATIVE(oldinstr, newinstr, feature) : : : "memory") #define alternative_2(oldinstr, newinstr1, feature1, newinstr2, feature2) \ - asm volatile(ALTERNATIVE_2(oldinstr, newinstr1, feature1, newinstr2, feature2) ::: "memory") + asm volatile inline(ALTERNATIVE_2(oldinstr, newinstr1, feature1, newinstr2, feature2) ::: "memory") /* * Alternative inline assembly with input. --- Build failed at link time with: arch/x86/boot/compressed/cmdline.o: In function `native_save_fl': cmdline.c:(.text+0x0): multiple definition of `native_save_fl' arch/x86/boot/compressed/misc.o:misc.c:(.text+0x1e0): first defined here arch/x86/boot/compressed/cmdline.o: In function `native_restore_fl': cmdline.c:(.text+0x10): multiple definition of `native_restore_fl' arch/x86/boot/compressed/misc.o:misc.c:(.text+0x1f0): first defined here arch/x86/boot/compressed/error.o: In function `native_save_fl': error.c:(.text+0x0): multiple definition of `native_save_fl' which I had to fix with this: --- diff --git a/arch/x86/include/asm/irqflags.h b/arch/x86/include/asm/irqflags.h index 15450a675031..0d772598c37c 100644 --- a/arch/x86/include/asm/irqflags.h +++ b/arch/x86/include/asm/irqflags.h @@ -14,8 +14,7 @@ */ /* Declaration required for gcc < 4.9 to prevent -Werror=missing-prototypes */ -extern inline unsigned long native_save_fl(void); -extern inline unsigned long native_save_fl(void) +static inline unsigned long native_save_fl(void) { unsigned long flags; @@ -33,8 +32,7 @@ ex --- That "extern inline" declaration looks fishy to me anyway, maybe not really needed ? Apparently, gcc < 4.9 complains with -Werror=missing-prototypes... Then the build worked and the results look like this: text data bss dec hex filename 17287384 5040656 2019532 24347572 17383b4 vmlinux-before 17288020 5040656 2015436 24344112 1737630 vmlinux-2nd-version so some inlining must be happening. Then I did this: --- diff --git a/arch/x86/lib/usercopy_64.c b/arch/x86/lib/usercopy_64.c index 9c5606d88f61..a0170344cf08 100644 --- a/arch/x86/lib/usercopy_64.c +++ b/arch/x86/lib/usercopy_64.c @@ -20,7 +20,7 @@ unsigned long __clear_user(void __user *addr, unsigned long size) /* no memory constraint because it doesn't change any memory gcc knows about */ stac(); - asm volatile( + asm volatile inline( " testq %[size8],%[size8]\n" " jz 4f\n" "0: movq $0,(%[dst])\n" --- to force inlining of a somewhat bigger asm() statement. And yap, more got inlined: text data bss dec hex filename 17287384 5040656 2019532 24347572 17383b4 vmlinux-before 17288020 5040656 2015436 24344112 1737630 vmlinux-2nd-version 17288076 5040656 2015436 24344168 1737668 vmlinux-2nd-version__clear_user so more stuff gets inlined. Looking at the asm output, it had before: --- clear_user: # ./arch/x86/include/asm/current.h:15: return this_cpu_read_stable(current_task); #APP # 15 "./arch/x86/include/asm/current.h" 1 movq %gs:current_task,%rax #, pfo_ret__ # 0 "" 2 # arch/x86/lib/usercopy_64.c:51: if (access_ok(VERIFY_WRITE, to, n)) #NO_APP movq 2520(%rax), %rdx # pfo_ret___12->thread.addr_limit.seg, _1 movq %rdi, %rax # to, tmp93 addq %rsi, %rax # n, tmp93 jc .L3 #, # arch/x86/lib/usercopy_64.c:51: if (access_ok(VERIFY_WRITE, to, n)) cmpq %rax, %rdx # tmp93, _1 jb .L3 #, # arch/x86/lib/usercopy_64.c:52: return __clear_user(to, n); jmp __clear_user # --- note the JMP to __clear_user. After marking the asm() in __clear_user() as inline, clear_user() inlines __clear_user() directly: --- clear_user: # ./arch/x86/include/asm/current.h:15: return this_cpu_read_stable(current_task); #APP # 15 "./arch/x86/include/asm/current.h" 1 movq %gs:current_task,%rax #, pfo_ret__ # 0 "" 2 # arch/x86/lib/usercopy_64.c:51: if (access_ok(VERIFY_WRITE, to, n)) #NO_APP movq 2520(%rax), %rdx # pfo_ret___12->thread.addr_limit.seg, _1 movq %rdi, %rax # to, tmp95 addq %rsi, %rax # n, tmp95 jc .L8 #, # arch/x86/lib/usercopy_64.c:51: if (access_ok(VERIFY_WRITE, to, n)) cmpq %rax, %rdx # tmp95, _1 jb .L8 #, # ./arch/x86/include/asm/smap.h:58: alternative("", __stringify(__ASM_STAC), X86_FEATURE_SMAP); ... this last line is the stac() macro which gets inlined due to the alternative() inlined macro above. So I guess this all looks like what we wanted. And if this lands in gcc9, we would need to do a asm_volatile() macro which is defined differently based on the compiler used. Thoughts, suggestions, etc are most welcome. Thx. -- Regards/Gruss, Boris. Good mailing practices for 400: avoid top-posting and trim the reply.