[OLPC-devel] Re: linker garbage collection

[David Woodhouse]

On Thu, 2006-08-31 at 14:05 -0300, Marcelo Tosatti wrote:
> On Thu, Aug 31, 2006 at 08:22:57AM -0700, David Woodhouse wrote:
> > On Tue, 2006-08-29 at 23:54 -0300, Marcelo Tosatti wrote:
> > > * Condition CONFIG_GC_SECTIONS on presence of a recent binutils  
> > 
> > Er, I missed something -- why does this need a recent binutils? We've
> > been building kernels with --gc-sections for years, at least on some
> > platforms.
> 
> First, I think its prudent to guarantee that a well behaved version of
> binutils (wrt. garbage collection) is being used. No?

Are recent versions of binutils known to misbehave? It's not as if
--gc-sections is a new thing.

> Second reason is the newly added --print-gc-sections option, which:

... needs to be a CONFIG option anyway so _that_ CONFIG option can
require the new binutils.

> 2) Its very useful for developers to
> 
> - Debug breakage caused by gc-section misbehaviour.
> - Easily check what symbols are being swept.

Some people will care -- many won't, but might want to build with
--gc-sections anyway. No reason not to let them do so, surely? Just
require new binutils if you want the --print-gc-sections stuff.

-- 
dwmw2