Re: [PATCH v2] arm32: Avoid using solaris syntax for .section directive

[Jan Beulich <jbeulich@xxxxxxxx>]

On 02.08.2023 09:54, Julien Grall wrote:
> On 02/08/2023 08:22, Jan Beulich wrote:
>> On 01.08.2023 23:02, Julien Grall wrote:
>>> Title: This patch is not arm32 specific anymore. So I would replace
>>> 'arm32' with 'arm'. This can be done on commit.
>>>
>>> On 01/08/2023 18:49, Khem Raj wrote:
>>>> Assembler from binutils 2.41 rejects [1] this syntax
>>>>
>>>> .section "name"[, flags...]
>>>>
>>>> where flags could be #alloc, #write, #execinstr, #exclude, and #tls [2]
>>>>
>>>> It is almost like a regression compared to 2.40 or older release,
>>>
>>> The next word after ',' start with an uppercase. Did you intend to use
>>> '.' rather than ','?
>>>
>>> That said, the documentation has the following:
>>>
>>> For SPARC ELF targets, the assembler supports another type of .section
>>> directive for compatibility with the Solaris assembler:"
>>
>> But note that "SPARC" was added there only by the commit introducing the
>> perceived regression.
> 
> Yes, I noticed it while replying yesterday. I still would not describe 
> it as a regression mainly because I am not convinced binutils will 
> revert the change and it feels like a good move.

I agree as to it being unlikely that the change is going to be (partly)
reverted, unless someone strongly advocated for it. It also wouldn't be
of much use to us, unless a 2.41.1 was cut very soon.

> Also, regarding your point about older tree on the bug report. I don't 
> think we guarantee that stable works all new toolchain without any change.

We don't guarantee that, no, but I think it is in our own interest to
keep things building with the newest tool chains. When build-testing
stable tree commits before pushing, I don't want to always have to
remember to force the build to use an older tool chain, when normally
my build rune would default to a pretty up-to-date one. This is also
why for this specific class of changes I typically prefer to see them
also go onto the security-only stable trees.

Jan