Re: [PATCH] kbuild: Make NOSTDINC_FLAGS a simply expanded variable

From: Doug Anderson
Date: Fri Mar 15 2019 - 12:12:16 EST


Hi,

On Fri, Mar 15, 2019 at 9:09 AM Masahiro Yamada
<yamada.masahiro@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> Hi,
>
> On Sat, Mar 16, 2019 at 12:41 AM Doug Anderson <dianders@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> >
> > Hi,
> >
> > On Fri, Mar 15, 2019 at 8:37 AM Masahiro Yamada
> > <yamada.masahiro@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> > >
> > > On Sat, Mar 16, 2019 at 12:27 AM Masahiro Yamada
> > > <yamada.masahiro@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> > > >
> > > > On Fri, Mar 15, 2019 at 8:42 AM Douglas Anderson <dianders@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> > > > >
> > > > > During a simple no-op (nothing changed) build I saw 39 invocations of
> > > > > the C compiler with the argument "-print-file-name=include". We don't
> > > > > need to call the C compiler 39 times for this--one time will suffice.
> > > > >
> > > > > Let's change NOSTDINC_FLAGS to a simply expanded variable to avoid
> > > > > this since there doesn't appear to be any reason it should be
> > > > > recursively expanded.
> > > > >
> > > > > On my build this shaved ~400 ms off my "no-op" build.
> > > > >
> > > > > Note that the recursive expansion seems to date back to the (really
> > > > > old) commit e8f5bdb02ce0 ("[PATCH] Makefile include path ordering").
> > > > > It's a little unclear to me if the point of that patch was to switch
> > > > > the variable to be recursively expanded (which it did) or to avoid
> > > > > directly assigning to NOSTDINC_FLAGS (AKA to switch to +=) because
> > > > > someone else (out of tree?) was setting it. I presume later since if
> > > > > the only goal was to switch to recursive expansion the patch would
> > > > > have just removed the ":".
> > > > >
> > > > > Signed-off-by: Douglas Anderson <dianders@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
> > > >
> > > > Applied to linux-kbuild.
> > > > Thanks.
> > >
> > >
> > > BTW, I noticed no one else
> > > appends NOSTDINC_FLAGS.
> > >
> > >
> > > So, does it make more sense to do as follows?
> > >
> > >
> > > NOSTDINC_FLAGS := -nostdinc -isystem $(shell $(CC) -print-file-name=include)
> >
> > It might. ...but go back to look at commit e8f5bdb02ce0 ("[PATCH]
> > Makefile include path ordering"). Why did they do a += there since
> > even then nobody was setting it. Try:
> >
> > $ git grep NOSTDINC_FLAGS e8f5bdb02ce0~
> >
> >
> > Do you understand what was going on in that commit?
>
>
> No, I do not understand.
>
> Maybe, it fixed a problem in downstream code
> since there was no directory like include/asm-xen.
>
>
> If you do not want to take risk,
> I am fine with this patch, though.

OK, let's keep the patch I posted then. Thanks!

-Doug