On Sat, Apr 28, 2001 at 02:07:53PM -0700, David S. Miller wrote:
> Why would ip_nat_cleanup() be removed by the linker?
Because we explicitly tell the linker to drop all code marked as
__exit:
#define __exit __attribute__ ((unused, __section__(".text.exit")))
>From x86 vmlinux.lds:
/* Sections to be discarded */
/DISCARD/ : {
*(.text.exit)
*(.data.exit)
*(.exitcall.exit)
}
> All the "unused"
> attribute should do is shut up gcc if the thing is marked static yet
> not called. The GCC manual even states "... means that the function
> is meant to be possibly unused. GNU CC will not produce a warning
> for this function." It makes no mention of any effect on the actual
> code output, or that the linker will delete it.
I quote from the ld info pages:
The special output section name `/DISCARD/' may be used to discard
input sections. Any input sections which are assigned to an output
section named `/DISCARD/' are not included in the output file.
> It doesn't remove the function on any platform I could test this on.
Try x86.
> If the linker removed it, why did it give a relocation truncation
> error instead of a missing symbol error? And more importantly, what
> specifically was the reason that the linker removed the function on
> ARM, what made this happen?
Architecture independent linker behaviour.
> Please explain this in detail so we don't have to guess as I have
> seen no other report of this.
The reason it shows up on ARM is because the relocation is not 32-bit
long, and therefore the relocation it is trying to encode generates
an error.
(I'm presuming that it was allocating the symbol an address of zero,
but I haven't checked this since trying to call a non-present section
seems a bit stupid to start with).
--
Russell King ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) The developer of ARM Linux
http://www.arm.linux.org.uk/personal/aboutme.html
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