For some time now, over 10 years anyway, the GNU world has been using
the linker to create initialized structs, viz:
static const struct cpu_driver driver __cpu_driver = {
.ops = &cpu_dev_ops,
.id_table = cpu_table,
};

(this from linuxbios)

The __cpu_driver is passed to the linker and you end up with an array
of all structs tagged with that name.

These are called linker sets. I first heard of them in 1995 or so when
freebsd moved away from generating arrays of structs from the BSD
config tool and used gld to create those same arrays.

Plan 9 takes the older style approach: a script parses a config file
and creates C code which initializes the struct arrays.

Now, I betray my age, I guess, but I prefer the plan 9 style. I am
curious: am I just out of touch with this modern world?

why can't both be true?

- erik

On Thu, Jul 31, 2008 at 3:04 PM, erik quanstrom quanstro.net> wrote:

I suspect both are true ...

ron

On Thu, 2008-07-31 at 15:02 -0700, ron minnich wrote:

I tend to dislike any kind of linker magic in user-space quite
profoundly. The most I can tolerate is PLT, I guess. But even
that is something I don't appreciate all that much when I need
to debug low level code. So I agree with you there 100%%.

Now, on the other hand, I guess kernel is different though.
Isn't it supposed to be one huge piece of magic to begin with? ;-)

Thanks,
Roman.

it's supposed to be neither.

- erik

On Fri, 2008-08-01 at 06:06 -0400, erik quanstrom wrote:

Yeah, but Ron was talking 'bout that kernel from Scandinavia,
right?

Thanks,
Roman.