removing .name from the .c files is a bad idea

Ronald G. Minnich rminnich at lanl.gov
Fri Oct 29 10:50:01 CEST 2004


1) it will save little space at all. Here are all the strings for the
   arima/hdama
	
Arima HDAMA mainboard
AMD 8111
NSC 87360
socket 940
AMD K8 Northbridge
Arima HDAMA mainboard
AMD 8111

It is 105 bytes. Compressed by itself with gzip -3 it is 99 bytes. that's
conservative because on a bigger binary the dictionary will be better and
it will probably get smaller. If we're that tight we're in big trouble and
it is time to move c_payload to 0xfffe0000, not fool around removing this
type of nit, which will only buy us a small amount of time. 

2) The string names could be printed as SPEW by the device tree code as it
   walks the tree, and aid comprehension.That code is not in yet but it is 
   trivial to write and should go in. 

If people are really that worried about it, I can add an option to
config.g and you can #ifdef to the .c files using that name. I don't see
the point but if you really need that 99 or so bytes I guess that you can
do that.

This issue brings up an important question. We have just made a 
far-reaching set of changes that had to be made -- but we impacted every 
port in V2. We need to start being careful about how global changes are 
made. 

With the current user base growing rapidly I think we're going to need to
create a formal process for this type of global change. This would be
(e.g.) a Configuration Review Board composed of stakeholders that would
vote up or down on changes. I think we are almost past the point where
people can make big changes such as this with no consultation. I try to
consult via the mailing list but I don't think that always works. Any
comments on this idea?

ron




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