Maciej W. Rozycki wrote: > On Fri, 19 Sep 2003, Thiemo Seufer wrote: > > > > > A third answer is to add a -msign-extend-addresses switch in the assembler. > > > > Together with -mabi=64 this would produce optimized ELF64 output. > > > > > > Hmm, what do you exactly mean -- is that what I am worrying about? > > > > The idea is to use the assembler's 32bit macro expansions for addresses. > > So it is... > > > This reduces the .text size of a n64 kernel and improves the performance, > > without tricks like -Wa,32. > > What if the final link leads to segments being mapped outside the 32-bit > address range? We won't know about it when assembling. Then the resulting code is broken. It's the programmers responsibility to care about it. IMHO that's not a problem, this feature is only useful for kernels, and the tricks currently done there are worse. > If the idea were to be implemented, there should be a flag added to the > header of object files that would forbid the linker to map addresses > outside the 32-bit range. Please don't add any header flag. An additional (.note?) section would be nice, but is not a priority for me. Thiemo
