Em Wed, Feb 04, 2009 at 05:16:18PM +0100, Petr Machata escreveu:
> Hi,
>
> .debug_arange analysis shows that there's a lot of holes in .text. Turns 
> out these are NOP runs (for alignment purposes, I guess).  First, is it 
> OK for the producer to leave NOP runs alone?  If yes, dwarflint  
> shouldn't warn about it, but then there is a problem of how to detect 
> this.
>
> I think we can assume that the compiler actually emits literal "NOP"  
> instructions for padding purposes (i.e. not one of these contraptions  
> that look like they do something).  But most of the time, we won't even  
> see contents of .text, will we?  We are dealing with stripped  
> debuginfo-only files.  Or are we going to do our debuginfo  
> transformation business on full files?

ftrace in the Linux kernel uses NOPs for leaving space for dynamic code
patching, to insert calls to mcount, etc.

I guess the alternatives code in the Linux kernel also uses NOPs to
provide a dynamicly optimizable kernel depending on the processor the
kernel is booted on.

If curious, take a look at:

arch/x86/include/asm/nops.h
arch/x86/include/asm/alternative.h
arch/um/sys-x86_64/shared/sysdep/system.h Look at rdtsc.

in the Linux sources :-)

- Arnaldo
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