Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S265223AbTIJQYD (ORCPT ); Wed, 10 Sep 2003 12:24:03 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S265158AbTIJQYD (ORCPT ); Wed, 10 Sep 2003 12:24:03 -0400 Received: from trained-monkey.org ([209.217.122.11]:27908 "EHLO trained-monkey.org") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S265165AbTIJQXh (ORCPT ); Wed, 10 Sep 2003 12:23:37 -0400 To: davidm@hpl.hp.com Cc: Subject: Re: [Patch] asm workarounds in generic header files References: <16222.14136.21774.211178@napali.hpl.hp.com> From: Jes Sorensen Date: 10 Sep 2003 12:22:37 -0400 In-Reply-To: <16222.14136.21774.211178@napali.hpl.hp.com> Message-ID: User-Agent: Gnus/5.0808 (Gnus v5.8.8) Emacs/20.7 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Content-Length: 1668 Lines: 34 >>>>> "David" == David Mosberger writes: [trimmed the CC list since this is more at the preference level] David> In my opinion, moving all the asm-stuff greatly improved David> readability of the source code. Especially for folks who are David> not intimately familiar with GCC asm syntax (which is hairy David> _and_ platform-specific). Hi David, I think this really depends on what you are trying to debug. If you expect the macros to do exactly what they are described to be doing then I'd agree. However every so often when you look up the macros you really want to look at the details what they are actually doing or even compare them to another arch's implementation to make sure they are behaving the same. At least thats my experience. I personally think it's unrealistic to think one can try and debug things in include/asm without being able to read the assembly output in the first place. David> I think the jury is out on this one. Clearly it's a huge David> benefit if you can make do without inline asm. GCC has to make David> lots of worst-case assumptions whenever it encounters an asm David> statement and, due to macros and inlining, the asm statements David> are not just hidden in a few leaf routines. Reducing the amount of inline asm in the kernel would be a good thing. It is cetainly one of those things that have been abused way beyond it's intent. Cheers, Jes - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/