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SubjectRe: [PATCH] cross-architecture ELF clean up
Roman Zippel wrote:
>> This patch cleans up the ELF headers and their users. It does several
>> related things:
>>
>> 1. split linux/elf.h into pieces
>>
>> This splits linux/elf.h into several pieces:
>> linux/elf.h - still the common elf header,
>> functionally unchanged
>> linux/elf-const.h - ELF constants, includable by asm code
>>
>
> We have the __ASSEMBLY__ define for this, so just for asm code we don't
> need a separate header.
>

Hm. The number of __ASSEMBLY__s end up being pretty large, and it just
seemed cleaner to put them in separate headers.

>> linux/elf-decl.h - ELF type declarations, without definitions
>> linux/elf-defn.h - ELF type definitions
>>
>
> What's the point in splitting these two?
>

Because there are other headers which just need some type
forward-declarations, and don't need the whole set of ELF types
defined. In particular, linux/module.h - which is included all over the
place in the kernel - needs a couple of ELF types declared, and
including it all over the place is just a waste. Also, there were some
nasty cyclic header dependency problems around linux/elf.h,
linux/module.h, linux/bug.h and asm/bug.h which ended up leading to some
awkward hacks; I need to remind myself what the problems were and see if
this elf cleanup helps (pretty sure it should).

> After this patch <linux/elf.h> seems to be pretty much empty, I'd rather
> suggest to move the function declarations to elfcore.h and leave the basic
> elf definitions in elf.h. Many small header files have the disadvantage
> that it takes longer to find the needed information.
>
linux/elf.h ends up pulling in a really surprising amount of stuff,
mostly because it ends up including asm/elf.h. asm/elf.h, in turn,
depending on the architecture, pulls in a wide variety of other
headers. When I cleaned this up, I found quite a few buggy .c files
which ended up relying on implicit includes via this chain.

Given that there's been a general push to try and cut down on the number
of header dependency entanglements, I thought I could contribute while
solving my own immediate problems.

linux/elfcore.h is specifically related to ELF core files, so the two
corefile notes-related headers could be moved there.

J
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