RE: [RFC] Extension to NOCROSSREFS linker script command

[Matthew Fortune <Matthew.Fortune@imgtec.com>]

Nick Clifton <nickc@redhat.com> writes:
> Hi Matthew,
> 
> > My proposal is relatively simple... A new command to check one
> > direction
> > only:
> >
> > NOCROSSREFSTO (<to-section> , <from-section1> , <from-section2> ...)
> >
> > The implementation of this in LD is pretty trivial. Any thoughts on
> > this or alternative approaches?
> 
> Actually this sounds like a sensible approach.
> 
> My concern from a binutils point of view is "is it worth it ?"  Any new
> feature has the possibility of introducing new bugs, and we want to
> avoid feature-creep.  So adding a new feature that is only going to be
> used by one person - ie you - would seem like a bad idea.  Now if there
> were other people also requesting this functionality, then that would be
> a different matter.
> 
> Of course this does not mean you should not create the patch if you want
> to, just that you should be prepared for the possibility that the patch
> might not be accepted into the official sources if we think that it is
> too risky.

Understood and agreed.

I would hope there are other users beyond myself (or rather MIPS embedded
users) who would find this kind of check useful when working with complex
memory layouts in multi-threaded or multi-core environments...

Either way I'll prepare the patch; it is small (sub 30 lines in my first
attempt) but number of lines doesn't always make decisions easier.

Thanks,
Matthew