I've been trying to follow this discussion but I don't see the consensus. Probably from my inexperience. Can someone summarize what works now, as opposed to what should be done? Is the solution the same for the 2.4kernel/gcc2.95 and the 2.6kernel/gcc3+? Also are all of these comments appicable to little and big endian systems? Thanks, David Kesselring On Fri, 19 Sep 2003, Thiemo Seufer wrote: > 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 > > David Kesselring Atmel MMC dkesselr@mmc.atmel.com 919-462-6587
