Re: Updated i386 bootcode rewrite patch...

Richard B. Johnson (root@chaos.analogic.com)
Thu, 14 Oct 1999 16:32:21 -0400 (EDT)


On Thu, 14 Oct 1999, David Dyck wrote:
[SNIPPED]

>
> > I wouldn't be surprised if other asms
> > around the kernel were compiled wrong (or at least sub-optimally) with
> > older binutils.
>
> Could you explain what you mean here a bit more please?
> What are some examples of sub-optimally assembled code that
> will be more optimally assembled when using 2.9.1.0.7?
> Are you refering to relative branch optimizations.
> I'm not really a fan of 'optimizing' assemblers :-)

I don't think he means 'optimizing' in the general sense. The early
gas compiled what was written. However, many bugs were not found
because gcc (which makes gas-asm as an intermediate step) didn't
generally generate bad code.

Since a lot of code got optimized into inline 'asm' macros to improve
performance, there were some bugs in that and gas didn't pick them
up.

Cheers,
Dick Johnson
**** FILE SYSTEM WAS MODIFIED ****
Penguin : Linux version 2.3.13 on an i686 machine (400.59 BogoMips).
Warning : It's hard to remain at the trailing edge of technology.

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