i386-netbsdelf description

[Jason R Thorpe]

On Tue, Jul 17, 2001 at 09:17:33AM -0700, Richard Henderson wrote:

 > That answers the question of whether it is used, but not how.
 > 
 > You don't have a separate compiler for building the kernel, surely.
 > Therefore the question: how does HAVE_KPRINTF_ATTRIBUTE get defined?

HAVE_KPRINTF_ATTRIBUTE would get defined when built from the NetBSD
source tree with the kprintf attribute patch.  The kprintf attribute
patch adds a new attribute `kprintf', that's like `printf', but also
understands some other formats available in the NetBSD kernel printf.
It's used to have printf format checking in the NetBSD kernel.

 > Besides -- it seems inordinately pointless to do this.  Why wouldn't
 > the kernel sources define __KPRINTF_ATTRIBUTE__?  Why would you hard
 > code this into the compiler?

...because it requires an extension to the compiler, which has
not beed contributed back since is changes MI compiler code but
is NetBSD-specific.

 > You were using a.out then, weren't you?  Plus that amazingly
 > broken GAS 1.something.

Even in ELF they are broken.  But I think I know why, and I'll chat
with Matt out-of-band about this.

-- 
        -- Jason R. Thorpe <thorpej@zembu.com>