Re: [PATCH 05/15] kbuild: build init/built-in.a just once

From: Jon Hunter
Date: Thu Nov 17 2022 - 05:01:03 EST


Hi Masahiro

On 28/08/2022 03:39, Masahiro Yamada wrote:
Kbuild builds init/built-in.a twice; first during the ordinary
directory descending, second from scripts/link-vmlinux.sh.

We do this because UTS_VERSION contains the build version and the
timestamp. We cannot update it during the normal directory traversal
since we do not yet know if we need to update vmlinux. UTS_VERSION is
temporarily calculated, but omitted from the update check. Otherwise,
vmlinux would be rebuilt every time.

When Kbuild results in running link-vmlinux.sh, it increments the
version number in the .version file and takes the timestamp at that
time to really fix UTS_VERSION.

However, updating the same file twice is a footgun. To avoid nasty
timestamp issues, all build artifacts that depend on init/built-in.a
must be atomically generated in link-vmlinux.sh, where some of them
do not need rebuilding.

To fix this issue, this commit changes as follows:

[1] Split UTS_VERSION out to include/generated/utsversion.h from
include/generated/compile.h

include/generated/utsversion.h is generated just before the
vmlinux link. It is generated under include/generated/ because
some decompressors (s390, x86) use UTS_VERSION.

[2] Split init_uts_ns and linux_banner out to init/version-timestamp.c
from init/version.c

init_uts_ns and linux_banner contain UTS_VERSION. During the ordinary
directory descending, they are compiled with __weak and used to
determine if vmlinux needs relinking. Just before the vmlinux link,
they are compiled without __weak to embed the real version and
timestamp.

Signed-off-by: Masahiro Yamada <masahiroy@xxxxxxxxxx>


Since this change I have noticed that the kernel image (at least on ARM64) now contains two version strings ...

$ strings arch/arm64/boot/Image | grep "Linux version"
Linux version 6.0.0-rc7-00011-g2df8220cc511 (jonathanh@moonraker) (aarch64-linux-gnu-gcc (Linaro GCC 6.4-2017.08) 6.4.1 20170707, GNU ld (Linaro_Binutils-2017.08) 2.27.0.20161019) # SMP PREEMPT
Linux version 6.0.0-rc7-00011-g2df8220cc511 (jonathanh@moonraker) (aarch64-linux-gnu-gcc (Linaro GCC 6.4-2017.08) 6.4.1 20170707, GNU ld (Linaro_Binutils-2017.08) 2.27.0.20161019) #20 SMP PREEMPT Thu Nov 17 09:49:18 GMT 2022

Is this expected?

Thanks!
Jon

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nvpublic