[PATCH 02/30] ARM: assembler: introduce adr_l, ldr_l and str_l macros

[Dave Martin]

On Mon, Aug 14, 2017 at 01:53:43PM +0100, Ard Biesheuvel wrote:
> Like arm64, ARM supports position independent code sequences that
> produce symbol references with a greater reach than the ordinary
> adr/ldr instructions.
> 
> Currently, we use open coded instruction sequences involving literals
> and arithmetic operations. Instead, we can use movw/movt pairs on v7
> CPUs, circumventing the D-cache entirely. For older CPUs, we can emit
> the literal into a subsection, allowing it to be emitted out of line
> while retaining the ability to perform arithmetic on label offsets.
> 
> E.g., on pre-v7 CPUs, we can emit a PC-relative reference as follows:
> 
>        ldr          <reg>, 222f
>   111: add          <reg>, <reg>, pc
>        .subsection  1
>   222: .long        <sym> - (111b + 8)
>        .previous
> 
> This is allowed by the assembler because, unlike ordinary sections,
> subsections are combined into a single section into the object file,
> and so the label references are not true cross-section references that
> are visible as relocations. Note that we could even do something like
> 
>        add          <reg>, pc, #(222f - 111f) & ~0xfff
>        ldr          <reg>, [<reg>, #(222f - 111f) & 0xfff]
>   111: add          <reg>, <reg>, pc
>        .subsection  1
>   222: .long        <sym> - (111b + 8)
>        .previous
> 
> if it turns out that the 4 KB range of the ldr instruction is insufficient
> to reach the literal in the subsection, although this is currently not a
> problem (of the 98 objects built from .S files in a multi_v7_defconfig
> build, only 11 have .text sections that are over 1 KB, and the largest one
> [entry-armv.o] is 3308 bytes)
> 
> Subsections have been available in binutils since 2004 at least, so
> they should not cause any issues with older toolchains.
> 
> So use the above to implement the macros mov_l, adr_l, adrm_l (using ldm

I don't see adrm_l in this patch.

> to load multiple literals at once), ldr_l and str_l, all of which will
> use movw/movt pairs on v7 and later CPUs, and use PC-relative literals
> otherwise.

Also...

By default, I'd assume that we should port _all_ uses of :upper16:/
:lower16: to use these.  Does this series consciously do that?  Are
there any exceptions?

[...]

Cheers
---Dave