Messages in this thread | | | Date | Tue, 25 Mar 2008 22:02:26 -0500 | From | Jack Steiner <> | Subject | Re: [RFC 5/8] x86_64: Add UV specific header for MMR definitions |
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On Tue, Mar 25, 2008 at 08:08:20PM -0400, Christoph Hellwig wrote: > On Tue, Mar 25, 2008 at 11:04:22AM +0100, Andi Kleen wrote: > > bitfields are only problematic on portable code, which this isn't. > > it's still crappy to read and a bad example for others. And last time > I heard about UV it also included an ia64 version, but that's been > loooong ago.
I agree that the format of the MMR definitions is not ideal. However, the alternative of maintaining a 1-off set of MMR definitions is not very attractive either. The definitions are auto-generated by hardware design tools and the definitions are used by a number of tools including diagnostics and BIOS. The definitions are still changing. I _think_ the registers used by the OS are fairly stable but there is no guarantee that there won't be additional changes.
The total size of the hardware generated files is over 200000 lines. We have a tool that extracts the definition of registers used by the OS. The tools also makes simple easy-to-debug formating changes such as eliminating screwy type-casts and typedefs.
I would certainly like to keep the auto-generated definitions and minimize the risk of introducing bugs by incorrectly generating a one-off set of definitions. The number of files that will use these definitions is small.
--- jack
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