Yes, the patch that he was objecting to :)
> > Relocation information for calls to local
> > functions is not reliably available at link time.
>
> With a smarter toolchain it could be.
>
> One will need a smarter toolchain in order to re-order functions
> anyway, which is an area where benchmarks on other compilers are
> showing benefits. (ie. moving "cold" functions to the end of the
> module, given profiling feedback)
No, the linker simply can not assume that this information is present.
That's a limitation of ELF. The right way to do this sort of
optimization is to compile every function into its own section and then
handle the (very small) performance cost of doing so by a relaxation
pass in the linker. You can't safely remove any part of an input
section, no matter what relocation information you think you have.
-- Daniel Jacobowitz Carnegie Mellon University MontaVista Software Debian GNU/Linux Developer - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/