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Nadav Amit authored
As described in:

  77b0bf55: ("kbuild/Makefile: Prepare for using macros in inline assembly code to work around asm() related GCC inlining bugs")

GCC's inlining heuristics are broken with common asm() patterns used in
kernel code, resulting in the effective disabling of inlining.

The workaround is to set an assembly macro and call it from the inline
assembly block. As a result GCC considers the inline assembly block as
a single instruction. (Which it isn't, but that's the best we can get.)

This patch increases the kernel size:

      text     data     bss      dec     hex  filename
  18146889 10225380 2957312 31329581 1de0d2d  ./vmlinux before
  18147336 10226688 2957312 31331336 1de1408  ./vmlinux after (+1755)

But enables more aggressive inlining (and probably better branch decisions).

The number of static text symbols in vmlinux is much lower:

 Before: 40218
 After:  40053 (-165)

The assembly code gets harder to read due to the extra macro layer.

[ mingo: Rewrote the changelog. ]

Tested-by: default avatarKees Cook <keescook@chromium.org>
Signed-off-by: default avatarNadav Amit <namit@vmware.com>
Acked-by: default avatarPeter Zijlstra (Intel) <peterz@infradead.org>
Cc: Andy Lutomirski <luto@amacapital.net>
Cc: Borislav Petkov <bp@alien8.de>
Cc: Brian Gerst <brgerst@gmail.com>
Cc: Denys Vlasenko <dvlasenk@redhat.com>
Cc: H. Peter Anvin <hpa@zytor.com>
Cc: Josh Poimboeuf <jpoimboe@redhat.com>
Cc: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
Cc: Peter Zijlstra <peterz@infradead.org>
Cc: Thomas Gleixner <tglx@linutronix.de>
Link: http://lkml.kernel.org/r/20181003213100.189959-7-namit@vmware.com


Signed-off-by: default avatarIngo Molnar <mingo@kernel.org>
f81f8ad5
History
Linux kernel
============

There are several guides for kernel developers and users. These guides can
be rendered in a number of formats, like HTML and PDF. Please read
Documentation/admin-guide/README.rst first.

In order to build the documentation, use ``make htmldocs`` or
``make pdfdocs``.  The formatted documentation can also be read online at:

    https://www.kernel.org/doc/html/latest/

There are various text files in the Documentation/ subdirectory,
several of them using the Restructured Text markup notation.
See Documentation/00-INDEX for a list of what is contained in each file.

Please read the Documentation/process/changes.rst file, as it contains the
requirements for building and running the kernel, and information about
the problems which may result by upgrading your kernel.