> In that case, you may as well forget about .a files and go back to
> individual .o files.
Actually, this works pretty well.
The regular Makefiles are moving in this direction (replacing .a files
with .o files), and I haven't seen any problems as a result. Have you?
The disadvantage of .o files is that mistakes in the Makefiles may cause
the kernel to get a little bigger than it needs to be, and no one will
notice. It's a simplicity-versus-size trade-off.
> The point of .a files is to only link code into the kernel if it is really
> needed. Most of the time it works but one case is not covered at the
> moment - when the only reference to some builtin code is from a module.
*Two* cases are not covered: references from modules, and code that
has an init section.
> A manual alternative is define a macro to force a symbol to be linked
> into the kernel.
Interesting. IMHO it would be simpler to change video.a to video.o.
But I would be comfortable with "force_link" if Linus prefers that approach.
Michael
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