[U-Boot] [PATCH V4 04/11] imximage: prepare to move static variables to struct data_src

Wolfgang Denk wd at denx.de
Wed Nov 28 21:30:40 CET 2012


Dear Troy Kisky,

In message <50B659AD.9090704 at boundarydevices.com> you wrote:
>
> > Could you please elucidate why exactly this is _needed_?
> 
> My goal was to reduce the number of static variables, but strictly speaking
> it has little benefit other than giving me a warm fuzzy feeling.
> 
> I'm not that only one that dislikes static though.
...
> ds is on the stack, and even if not needed now, I like to avoid future 
> random bugs.

Did you check the impact of your changes on the memory footprint?

Changing code that uses a static variable initialized (implicitly or
explicitly) to zero [which results in allocation of the BSS segment,
i. e. zero space in the code or in the image file] into real code
is something that is a bit of expensive just for satisfying random
"dislikes".

I think you should better leave that as is.  The code is pretty
efficent that way, and you increase it for little or no benefit.

Best regards,

Wolfgang Denk

-- 
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