Re: PATCH: hpux NM_FLAGS

["John David Anglin" <dave at hiauly1 dot hia dot nrc dot ca>]

> I'm awful close to removing support for arbitrary sections in SOM.  The
> benefits for SOM are relatively small and they're turning out to be a
> major pain in the *()&@#$.
> 
> Benefits:
> 
>   1. With some work it is possible to use arbitrary section support to
>   specify ordering of functions and variables in an object file. 
>   However, it's bloody hard since SOM doesn't have a nice linker script
>   language -- it takes a fair amount of knowledge of how the SOM linker
>   works to achieve this.

I agree that the current scheme is a major headache.  Ordering of
functions and data would be a lot easier to achieve if there was sort
__attribute__.  The integer sort value could be used as part of the
the subspace name.  For example, the subspace name for a sort key of
32 could be "$CODE_32$".

It would seem like a pain in the neck to try process the link order
file generated by fdp.  I haven't looked at this at all.  If the sections
were just numbered, would it still be possible to do ordering?

> That's it.  There is no garbage collection in the SOM linker, so we don't
> get the one thing that actually use generally useful with arbitrary section
> support.

Thought the linker "-O" option would turn-on dead procedure elimination.

Dave
-- 
J. David Anglin                                  dave.anglin@nrc.ca
National Research Council of Canada              (613) 990-0752 (FAX: 952-6605)