Re: [PATCH 2/2] x86 : relocate uninitialized variable in init DATAsection into init BSS section

[H. Peter Anvin]

Ingo Molnar wrote:
> well, that's bad. We'd silently ignore the " = 1" and boot up with that 
> value at 0, right? At minimum we need some really prominent build-time 
> _errors_ (i.e. aborted builds) if this ever happens. But ideally, 
> shouldnt this whole thing be done at link time? Couldnt the linker sort 
> the variables that are zero initialized into the right section, and move 
> this constant maintenance pressure off the programmer's shoulder?

Not the linker (unless each variable is put in its own section)... the 
compiler could (should!) do it... unfortunately gcc failed to provide a 
way to specify rodata, data and bss sections for a single data item (on 
the assumption that if you specified a section, you already knew were it 
should be going.)

What we really need is a new gcc extension:

__attribute__((sections("data", "rodata", "bss")))

... where gcc stuffs it into the appropriate section depending on where 
it belongs, just as it does with undecorated data items.

	-hpa
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