Re: [PATCH] lib/lz4: make arrays static const, reduces object code size

From: Joe Perches
Date: Fri Sep 22 2017 - 21:33:40 EST


On Fri, 2017-09-22 at 23:39 +0200, Arnd Bergmann wrote:
> On Fri, Sep 22, 2017 at 9:17 PM, Arnd Bergmann <arnd@xxxxxxxx> wrote:
> > On Fri, Sep 22, 2017 at 7:21 PM, Joe Perches <joe@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> > > On Fri, 2017-09-22 at 09:48 +0200, Arnd Bergmann wrote:
> > > > On Fri, Sep 22, 2017 at 1:11 AM, Colin Ian King
> > > > text data bss dec hex filename
> > > > 18220 176 0 18396 47dc build/tmp/lib/lz4/lz4_decompress-after.o
> > > > 22297 0 0 22297 5719 build/tmp/lib/lz4/lz4_decompress-before.o
> > >
> > > Perhaps not so much a gcc bug as an opportunity
> > > for gcc to add an additional optimization.
> > >
> > > gcc would have to verify that the const array is
> > > not initialized with some variable or argument like:
> > >
> > > int foo(int a)
> > > {
> > > const int array[] = {1, a};
> > > ...
> > > }
> >
> > It depends. With a 10KB different in .text size, my guess is that this
> > is a case where gcc does the right optimization in principle, but
> > fails to do what was intended in some corner cases.
>
> I found the problem: "gcc -fsanitze=kernel-address --param asan-stack=1"
> produces lots of expensive checks here with gcc-5 or higher.
>
> Disabling it makes a big difference:
>
> upstream:
> gcc-7.0.0 --fsanitze=kernel-address --param asan-stack=1: 31789 bytes
> gcc-7.0.0: 16535 bytes
>
> patched:
> gcc-7.0.0 --fsanitze=kernel-address --param asan-stack=1: 20351 bytes
> gcc-7.0.0: 14490 bytes

I think you are looking at a different issue.

There seems still a difference in size between
current and Colin's patch in compiled object size.



> Arnd