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Date: Mon, 10 Jan 2005 17:55:52 +0100
From: Matthias-Christian Ott <matthias.christian@tiscali.de>
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To: Adrian Bunk <bunk@stusta.de>
CC: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>, Arjan van de Ven <arjan@infradead.org>,
       Kernel Mailing List <linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org>,
       Andrew Morton <akpm@osdl.org>, Richard Henderson <rth@twiddle.net>
Subject: Re: removing bcopy... because it's half broken
References: <20050109192305.GA7476@infradead.org> <Pine.LNX.4.58.0501091213000.2339@ppc970.osdl.org> <20050110004313.GB1483@stusta.de>
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Adrian Bunk wrote:

>On Sun, Jan 09, 2005 at 12:19:09PM -0800, Linus Torvalds wrote:
>  
>
>>On Sun, 9 Jan 2005, Arjan van de Ven wrote:
>>    
>>
>>>Instead of fixing this inconsistency, I decided to remove it entirely,
>>>explicit memcpy() and memmove() are prefered anyway (welcome to the 1990's)
>>>and nothing in the kernel is using these functions, so this saves code size
>>>as well for everyone.
>>>      
>>>
>>The problem is that at least some gcc versions would historically generate
>>calls to "bcopy" on alpha for structure assignments. Maybe it doesn't any
>>more, and no such old gcc versions exist any more, but who knows?
>>...
>>    
>>
>
>include/asm-alpha/string.h says:
>
>  /*
>   * GCC of any recent vintage doesn't do stupid things with bcopy.
>   * EGCS 1.1 knows all about expanding memcpy inline, others don't.
>   *
>   * Similarly for a memset with data = 0.
>   */
>
>
>And Arjan's patch is pretty low-risk:
>
>If it breaks on any architecture with any supported compiler (>= 2.95), 
>it will break at compile time and there will pretty fast be reports of 
>this breakage in which case it would be easy to revert his patch.
>
>
>  
>
>>		Linus
>>    
>>
>
>cu
>Adrian
>
>  
>
Jep and most people are using a newer gcc and newer glibc. Linux has to 
stay up2date, so I think it's the best choise to create a modern and 
clean (without broken functions) OS.

Matthias-Christian Ott