[RFC PATCH 5/9] linker_lists.h: drop _2 from section and symbol name prefix

[Rasmus Villemoes]

On Mon, May 25 2026, Simon Glass <sjg at chromium.org> wrote:

> Hi Rasmus,
>
> On 2026-05-22T21:27:48, Rasmus Villemoes <ravi at prevas.dk> wrote:
>> linker_lists.h: drop _2 from section and symbol name prefix
>>
>> Since commit e2138cf1e60 ("linker_lists.h: drop never used ll_start,
>> ll_end macros"), which removed macros that would create
>> __u_boot_list_1 and __u_boot_list_3 sections, the first _2 in the
>> linker list section names doesn't serve any purpose and is in fact
>> just confusing. So remove it.
>>
>> There never seemed to be a reason for the symbol names to have that
>> _2, other than perhaps for consistency with the section those symbols
>> belonged to. Regardless, remove that as well.
>>
>> All linker scripts use a '__u_boot_list*' glob, so they will work just
>> the same without that common _2.
>>
>> Keep the _2_ part in the separator between list and entry names for
>> symbols, since that is called out in the documentation to allow one to
>> define sublists and iterate over those. I cannot find any current use
>> of that feature, but a later patch will make use of just that.
>>
>> [...]
>>
>> include/linker_lists.h | 8 ++++----
>>  1 file changed, 4 insertions(+), 4 deletions(-)
>
>> diff --git a/include/linker_lists.h b/include/linker_lists.h
>> @@ -19,11 +19,11 @@
>> -#define ll_start_section_name(_list)        '__u_boot_list_2_'#_list'_1'
>> -#define ll_entry_section_name(_list, _name) '__u_boot_list_2_'#_list'_2_'#_name
>> -#define ll_end_section_name(_list)          '__u_boot_list_2_'#_list'_3'
>> +#define ll_start_section_name(_list)        '__u_boot_list_'#_list'_1'
>> +#define ll_entry_section_name(_list, _name) '__u_boot_list_'#_list'_2_'#_name
>> +#define ll_end_section_name(_list)          '__u_boot_list_'#_list'_3'
>
>>
>> -#define ll_entry_symbol_name(_list, _name) _u_boot_list_2_##_list##_2_##_name
>> +#define ll_entry_symbol_name(_list, _name) _u_boot_list_##_list##_2_##_name
>
> The linker scripts all use a '__u_boot_list*' glob, but several other
> places hard-code the old prefix and this patch does not update them:
>
> scripts/gen_ll_addressable_symbols.sh:14 greps for
>      '_u_boot_list_2_[a-zA-Z0-9_]*_2_[a-zA-Z0-9_]*'
>   which is fed into the LTO keep-symbols build step (cmd_keep_syms_lto
> in the top-level Makefile). With the new names this matches nothing,
> so LTO builds silently lose the __ADDRESSABLE() guards.
>

> scripts/event_dump.py hard-codes
>      PREFIX_FULL = '_u_boot_list_2_evspy_info_2_'
>      PREFIX_SIMPLE = '_u_boot_list_2_evspy_info_simple_2_'
>   so the script (and test_event_dump.py) stop finding anything.
>
> test/py/conftest.py has
>      RE_UT_TEST_LIST =
> re.compile(r'[^a-zA-Z0-9_]_u_boot_list_2_ut_(.*)_2_(.*)\s*$')
>   which is how test.py enumerates ut subtests - this breaks test
> discovery for individual UT suites.

Ah yes, thanks. I wonder how I could miss those.

They are of course all trivial to update. But for the
gen_ll_addressable_symbols.sh script, I do wonder why the __ADDRESSABLE
wasn't just made part of the ll macros. It has since grown another
__stack_chk_guard, but that too should be able to just have its
ADDRESSABLE marking in the (ordinary C) TU that defines it.

Rasmus