linux-kernel - Re: about relocs.c on x86

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Message-ID: <20080131101111.GB11867@elte.hu>
Date:	Thu, 31 Jan 2008 11:11:11 +0100
From:	Ingo Molnar <mingo@...e.hu>
To:	Harvey Harrison <harvey.harrison@...il.com>
Cc:	Yinghai Lu <yhlu.kernel@...il.com>,
	Linux Kernel Mailing List <linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org>,
	Thomas Gleixner <tglx@...utronix.de>,
	"H. Peter Anvin" <hpa@...or.com>
Subject: Re: about relocs.c on x86

* Harvey Harrison <harvey.harrison@...il.com> wrote:

> > during the big first phase of unification we generally kept file 
> > names untouched if they were only present in one of the previous 
> > architectures. I.e. pure 32-bit and pure 64-bit files were not 
> > renamed to _32/_64.
> > 
> > Now that we've got lots of unified 32/64-bit files it might make 
> > sense to rename the 'standalone' ones into _32/_64 if they share the 
> > same directory with 32/64-bit source files - to reduce the 
> > confusion. And given that for example 
> > arch/x86/boot/compressed/misc.c is unified while 
> > arch/x86/boot/compressed/relocs.c is 32-bit only, i'd agree with 
> > your observation. Feel free to send a rename patch for such cases.
> 
> I'd argue that eliminating the _32/_64 suffixes through unification 
> and not adding any more would be better.  Renaming at this point seems 
> like the wrong side of the cost/benefit line.  When the makefiles 
> finally get unified, that would be a natural list of what is 32 
> bit-only and what is 64 bit-only, and additional suffixes wouldn't add 
> much to that.

no strong opinion from me - but i think it should be obvious to the 
developer when they are looking at a .c file that it's 32-bit only (or 
64-bit only). I.e. the default is that whatever .c file we look at is 
unified - and in that sense relocs.c breaks that general expectation.

In fact renaming it to _32.c might spur its unification: people might 
say "hm, this would be handy on 64-bit as well". We might even do that 
to directories - so that for example arch/x86/math-emu/ would become 
arch/x86/match-emu_32/.

( Hey, and maybe someone is crazy enough to try to port the math-emu 
  code to 64-bit and boot Linux up on 64-bit with all user-space FPU ops 
  emulated. It would be one of the most useless hacks of all times, and 
  that certainly has a certain kind of sick appeal to it, doesnt it? ;-))

but it's really not a big issue, we can certainly leave it alone and 
observe the situation as more stuff gets unified. I'd expect it all fall 
into place naturally.

	Ingo
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