[Satyam Sharma <satyam@infradead.org>]

On Wed, 15 Aug 2007, Segher Boessenkool wrote:

> > > > What you probably mean is that the compiler has to assume any code
> > > > it cannot currently see can do anything (insofar as allowed by the
> > > > relevant standards etc.)
> > 
> > I think this was just terminology confusion here again. Isn't "any code
> > that it cannot currently see" the same as "another compilation unit",
> 
> It is not; try  gcc -combine  or the upcoming link-time optimisation
> stuff, for example.
> 
> > and wouldn't the "compilation unit" itself expand if we ask gcc to
> > compile more than one unit at once? Or is there some more specific
> > "definition" for "compilation unit" (in gcc lingo, possibly?)
> 
> "compilation unit" is a C standard term.  It typically boils down
> to "single .c file".

As you mentioned later, "single .c file with all the other files (headers
or other .c files) that it pulls in via #include" is actually "translation
unit", both in the C standard as well as gcc docs. "Compilation unit"
doesn't seem to be nearly as standard a term, though in most places it
is indeed meant to be same as "translation unit", but with the new gcc
inter-module-analysis stuff that you referred to above, I suspect one may
reasonably want to call a "compilation unit" as all that the compiler sees
at a given instant.

BTW I did some auditing (only inside include/asm-{i386,x86_64}/ and
arch/{i386,x86_64}/) and found a couple more callsites that don't use
cpu_relax():

arch/i386/kernel/crash.c:101
arch/x86_64/kernel/crash.c:97

that are:

	while ((atomic_read(&waiting_for_crash_ipi) > 0) && msecs) {
		mdelay(1);
		msecs--;
	}

where mdelay() becomes __const_udelay() which happens to be in another
translation unit (arch/i386/lib/delay.c) and hence saves this callsite
from being a bug :-)

Curiously, __const_udelay() is still marked as "inline" where it is
implemented in lib/delay.c which is weird, considering it won't ever
be inlined, would it? With the kernel presently being compiled one
translation unit at a time, I don't see how the implementation would
be visible to any callsite out there to be able to inline it.


Satyam