Re: Introducing a nanoMIPS port for Binutils, GDB and GOLD

[Vladimir Radosavljevic <Vladimir dot Radosavljevic at mips dot com>]

Hi Cary,

Thanks for the feedback!

> This one looked OK, too. Apologies, again.

I was aware that some patches are pending for review, so it was no trouble
at all to apply them and see if they fix problems we found.

> > - Fixed NOLOAD behavior
> >   (https://sourceware.org/ml/binutils/2015-09/msg00216.html)
>
> There were issues with this patch. See the discussion starting with
> this message:
>
>    https://sourceware.org/ml/binutils/2015-09/msg00179.html
>
> The problem is that this makes NOLOAD mean something different from
> what's documented, and we had known use cases for what it currently
> does (those cases may not exist anymore, but I can't be certain).
>
> There really is no need to declare a section NOBITS, which is what the
> patch sought to turn "NOLOAD" into. An output section whose contents
> are all NOBITS, and which falls at the end of a segment, should be
> turned into a NOBITS section automatically. Gold didn't do that
> correctly originally, but that should have been fixed with the
> following patch:
>
>    https://sourceware.org/ml/binutils/2016-12/msg00184.html

As far as I know, NOLOAD section type is used for bare metal in cases
where application (which is placed in RAM) wants to call code in the ROM.
It was easier to match GNU ld behavior rather than change linker script
to not use NOLOAD section type.

> Looking forward to your patches! Did you implement this as a new
> target, or as part of the current mips target?

Nanomips port is implemented as a new target.

> (Also, please be aware that I'll be away with little or no internet
> access from May 10-27, so I won't be able to start reviewing patches
> until the end of the month.)

This is fine as my plan is to start submitting patches at the beginning
of June.

Thanks,
Vladimir