linux-stable.git/Documentation/kbuild, branch v5.2

kbuild: drop support for cc-ldoption

2019-05-20T15:02:59+00:00

If you want to see if your linker supports a certain flag, then ask the
linker directly with ld-option (not the compiler with cc-ldoption).
Checking for linker flag support is an antipattern that complicates the
usage of various linkers other than bfd via -fuse-ld={bfd|gold|lld}.

Cc: clang-built-linux@googlegroups.com
Suggested-by: Masahiro Yamada 
Signed-off-by: Nick Desaulniers 
Signed-off-by: Masahiro Yamada

moduleparam: Save information about built-in modules in separate file

2019-05-07T12:50:24+00:00

Problem:

When a kernel module is compiled as a separate module, some important
information about the kernel module is available via .modinfo section of
the module. In contrast, when the kernel module is compiled into the
kernel, that information is not available.

Information about built-in modules is necessary in the following cases:

1. When it is necessary to find out what additional parameters can be
passed to the kernel at boot time.

2. When you need to know which module names and their aliases are in
the kernel. This is very useful for creating an initrd image.

Proposal:

The proposed patch does not remove .modinfo section with module
information from the vmlinux at the build time and saves it into a
separate file after kernel linking. So, the kernel does not increase in
size and no additional information remains in it. Information is stored
in the same format as in the separate modules (null-terminated string
array). Because the .modinfo section is already exported with a separate
modules, we are not creating a new API.

It can be easily read in the userspace:

$ tr '\0' '\n' < modules.builtin.modinfo
ext4.softdep=pre: crc32c
ext4.license=GPL
ext4.description=Fourth Extended Filesystem
ext4.author=Remy Card, Stephen Tweedie, Andrew Morton, Andreas Dilger, Theodore Ts'o and others
ext4.alias=fs-ext4
ext4.alias=ext3
ext4.alias=fs-ext3
ext4.alias=ext2
ext4.alias=fs-ext2
md_mod.alias=block-major-9-*
md_mod.alias=md
md_mod.description=MD RAID framework
md_mod.license=GPL
md_mod.parmtype=create_on_open:bool
md_mod.parmtype=start_dirty_degraded:int
...

Co-Developed-by: Gleb Fotengauer-Malinovskiy
Signed-off-by: Gleb Fotengauer-Malinovskiy
Signed-off-by: Alexey Gladkov
Acked-by: Jessica Yu
Signed-off-by: Masahiro Yamada

kbuild: force all architectures except um to include mandatory-y

2019-03-17T03:56:32+00:00

Currently, every arch/*/include/uapi/asm/Kbuild explicitly includes
the common Kbuild.asm file. Factor out the duplicated include directives
to scripts/Makefile.asm-generic so that no architecture would opt out
of the mandatory-y mechanism.

um is not forced to include mandatory-y since it is a very exceptional
case which does not support UAPI.

Signed-off-by: Masahiro Yamada

kbuild: remove cc-version macro

2019-03-04T13:34:59+00:00

There is no more direct user of this macro; it is only used by
cc-ifversion.

Calling this macro is not efficient since it invokes the compiler to
get the compiler version. CONFIG_GCC_VERSION is already calculated in
the Kconfig stage, so Makefile can reuse it.

Here is a note about the slight difference between cc-version and
CONFIG_GCC_VERSION:

When using Clang, cc-version is evaluated to '0402' because Clang
defines __GNUC__ and __GNUC__MINOR__, and looks like GCC 4.2 in the
version point of view. On the other hand, CONFIG_GCC_VERSION=0
when $(CC) is clang.

There are currently two users of cc-ifversion:
  arch/mips/loongson64/Platform
  arch/powerpc/Makefile

They are not affected by this change.

The format of cc-version is , while CONFIG_GCC_VERSION
. I adjusted cc-ifversion for the difference of
the number of digits.

Signed-off-by: Masahiro Yamada

kbuild: turn '/' into an alias of './'

2019-02-20T00:42:47+00:00

Commit 06300b21f4c7 ("kbuild: support building individual files for
external modules") introduced the '/' target. It works only for
external modules to build all .o files, but skip the modpost stage.

However, 'make /' looks a bit weird to me. 'make ./' is more sensible
if you want to build all objects under the current directory, and it
works as expected.

Let's change '/' into a phony target that is an alias of './', but
I may feel like deprecating it in the future.

Signed-off-by: Masahiro Yamada

kbuild: merge KBUILD_VMLINUX_{INIT,MAIN} into KBUILD_VMLINUX_OBJS

2019-01-28T00:11:17+00:00

The top Makefile does not need to export KBUILD_VMLINUX_INIT and
KBUILD_VMLINUX_MAIN separately.

Put every built-in.a into KBUILD_VMLINUX_OBJS. The order of
$(head-y), $(init-y), $(core-y), ... is still retained.

Signed-off-by: Masahiro Yamada

kbuild: remove top-level built-in.a

2019-01-28T00:11:17+00:00

The symbol table in the final archive is unneeded; the linker does not
require the symbol table after the --whole-archive option. Every object
file in the archive is included in the link anyway.

Pass thin archives from subdirectories directly to the linker, and
remove the final archiving step.

Fix up the document and comments as well.

Signed-off-by: Masahiro Yamada 
Acked-by: Nicholas Piggin

kbuild: generate asm-generic wrappers if mandatory headers are missing

2019-01-06T00:46:51+00:00

Some time ago, Sam pointed out a certain degree of overwrap between
generic-y and mandatory-y. (https://lkml.org/lkml/2017/7/10/121)

I tweaked the meaning of mandatory-y a little bit; now it defines the
minimum set of ASM headers that all architectures must have.

If arch does not have specific implementation of a mandatory header,
Kbuild will let it fallback to the asm-generic one by automatically
generating a wrapper. This will allow to drop lots of redundant
generic-y defines.

Previously, "mandatory" was used in the context of UAPI, but I guess
this can be extended to kernel space ASM headers.

Suggested-by: Sam Ravnborg 
Signed-off-by: Masahiro Yamada 
Acked-by: Sam Ravnborg

kbuild: announce removal of SUBDIRS if used

2018-12-01T13:21:56+00:00

SUBDIRS has been kept as a backward compatibility since
commit ("[PATCH] kbuild: external module support") in 2002.

We do not need multiple ways to do the same thing, so I will remove
SUBDIRS after the Linux 5.3 release. I cleaned up in-tree code, and
updated the document so that nobody would try to use it.

Meanwhile, display the following warning if SUBDIRS is used.

Makefile:189: ================= WARNING ================
Makefile:190: 'SUBDIRS' will be removed after Linux 5.3
Makefile:191: Please use 'M=' or 'KBUILD_EXTMOD' instead
Makefile:192: ==========================================

Signed-off-by: Masahiro Yamada 
Acked-by: Boris Brezillon  # for scx200_docflash.c
Acked-by: Guenter Roeck  # for scx200_wdt.c

kbuild: remove unused cc-fullversion variable

2018-11-01T15:15:26+00:00

The last user of cc-fullversion was removed by commit f2910f0e6835
("powerpc: remove old GCC version checks").

Signed-off-by: Masahiro Yamada