On Thu, Mar 29, 2018 at 9:14 AM, Russell King - ARM Linux
<linux@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> On Wed, Mar 28, 2018 at 02:04:22PM -0500, Rob Landley wrote:
>>
>>
>> On 03/28/2018 11:48 AM, Russell King - ARM Linux wrote:
>> > On Wed, Mar 28, 2018 at 10:58:51AM -0500, Rob Landley wrote:
>> >> On 03/28/2018 10:26 AM, Shea Levy wrote:
>> >>> Now only those architectures that have custom initrd free requirements
>> >>> need to define free_initrd_mem.
>> >> ...
>> >>> --- a/arch/arc/mm/init.c
>> >>> +++ b/arch/arc/mm/init.c
>> >>> @@ -229,10 +229,3 @@ void __ref free_initmem(void)
>> >>> {
>> >>> free_initmem_default(-1);
>> >>> }
>> >>> -
>> >>> -#ifdef CONFIG_BLK_DEV_INITRD
>> >>> -void __init free_initrd_mem(unsigned long start, unsigned long end)
>> >>> -{
>> >>> - free_reserved_area((void *)start, (void *)end, -1, "initrd");
>> >>> -}
>> >>> -#endif
>> >>> diff --git a/arch/arm/Kconfig b/arch/arm/Kconfig
>> >>> index 3f972e83909b..19d1c5594e2d 100644
>> >>> --- a/arch/arm/Kconfig
>> >>> +++ b/arch/arm/Kconfig
>> >>> @@ -47,6 +47,7 @@ config ARM
>> >>> select HARDIRQS_SW_RESEND
>> >>> select HAVE_ARCH_AUDITSYSCALL if (AEABI && !OABI_COMPAT)
>> >>> select HAVE_ARCH_BITREVERSE if (CPU_32v7M || CPU_32v7) && !CPU_32v6
>> >>> + select HAVE_ARCH_FREE_INITRD_MEM
>> >>> select HAVE_ARCH_JUMP_LABEL if !XIP_KERNEL && !CPU_ENDIAN_BE32 && MMU
>> >>> select HAVE_ARCH_KGDB if !CPU_ENDIAN_BE32 && MMU
>> >>> select HAVE_ARCH_MMAP_RND_BITS if MMU
>> >>
>> >> Isn't this why weak symbols were invented?
>> >
>> > Weak symbols means that we end up with both the weakly-referenced code
>> > and the arch code in the kernel image. That's fine if the weak code
>> > is small.
>>
>> The kernel's been able to build with link time garbage collection since 2016:
>>
>> https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/commit/?id=b67067f1176d
>>
>> Wouldn't that remove the unused one?
>
> Probably, if anyone bothered to use that, which they don't.
>
> LD_DEAD_CODE_DATA_ELIMINATION is a symbol without a prompt, and from
> what I can see, nothing selects it. Therefore, the symbol is always
> disabled, and so the feature never gets used in mainline kernels.
>
> Brings up the obvious question - why is it there if it's completely
> unused? (Maybe to cause confusion, and allowing a justification
> for __weak ?)
IIRC Nick had some patches to do the arch enablement for powerpc, but
I'm not sure what happened to them though. I suspect it just fell down
Nick's ever growing TODO list.
