The new requirement for (weak) symbol aliasing: <Quote from GCC 4.0.x release notes> Given __attribute__((alias("target"))) it is now an error if target is not a symbol, defined in the same translation unit. This also applies to aliases created by #pragma weak alias=target. This is because it's meaningless to define an alias to an undefined symbol. On Solaris, the native assembler would have caught this error, but GNU as does not. </Quote> breaks compilation of code like this (example from an sh-elf target, but the effect is architecture-independent): extern __attribute__((weak,alias("UIE11"))) void NMI(void); void UIE11 (void); asm( "_UIE11:\tbsr\t_UIE\n\tmov.l\t@r15+,r4\t\n" ); which is perfectly valid and worked in all of gcc 3.0.x, gcc 3.3.x and gcc 3.4.x
I don't think this is valid to do this, you are hiding away a lot of code.
I am indeed hiding a lot of code, but hopefully in order to pinpoint the issue. This code snippet is taken from the rockbox project http://www.rockbox.org/ , precisely from http://www.rockbox.org/viewcvs.cgi/firmware/system.c?annotate=1.73 Check lines 652-1019. This is part of the exception handling on the SH1 target CPU. All exceptions are handled in one C handler function, UIE(). However, the only way to get the exception number on SH1 is checking the called handler address, so all exceptions that aren't handled by other code are handled by tiny assembler snippets which just fetch their callee address and pass it to UIE(), which then checks the address it was called from.
(In reply to comment #2) This seems like a hack instead of using different files for the asm and C function and then only link in the files which are needed.
How do you mean, it seems like a hack? Obviously we can't put the asm in a different file, because then the symbols would clearly be defined in a different translation unit. As-is they are not, but gcc 4.0.x errors because it doesn't see the symbols in the inline asm. There are two main points which require the code to work like it does: (1) As mentioned, the exception number can only be derived from the called address. UIE() is there to catch all unexpected interrupts and exceptions, i.e. those for which there are no specific handlers. That's why all _UIE##number symbols are defined in the asm block, in a regular structure that allows to compute the vector number from the called address easily. (2) We need to weak-alias these asm symbols because they should only be used when there is no dedicated handler for the specific interrupt or exception defined in any other source file. Perhaps it would be possible to hard code which handlers are implemented elsewhere and which are not, but that would be rather hard to maintain.
I think it's correct for the compiler to reject this and require that you make the function definition visible to the compiler. You can do that using a naked function; if naked functions aren't supported for your target, that's a separate feature request for that target to add support for that attribute.