Unnecessary Relocation Hiding?

["Dong Feng" <middle.fengdong@gmail.com>]

Hi, all,

I have a question. Why shall we need a RELOC_HIDE() macro in the
definition of per_cpu()? Maybe the question is actually why we need
macro RELOC_HIDE() at all. I changed the following line in
include/asm-generic/percpu.h, from

#define per_cpu(var, cpu) (*RELOC_HIDE(&per_cpu__##var, __per_cpu_offset[cpu]))

to

#define per_cpu(var, cpu) (*((unsigned long)(&per_cpu__##var) +
__per_cpu_offset[cpu]))

I recompiled the code and it works well on my Intel Dual-core laptop.
It essentially the same as to change the definition of RELOC_HIDE(),
from

#define RELOC_HIDE(ptr, off) \
 ({ unsigned long __ptr; \
   __asm__ ("" : "=r"(__ptr) : "0"(ptr)); \
   (typeof(ptr)) (__ptr + (off)); })

to


#define RELOC_HIDE(ptr, off) \
 ({ unsigned long __ptr; \
   __ptr = (unsigned long)ptr; \
   (typeof(ptr)) (__ptr + (off)); })


Why shouldn't we have a pure C solution in this part?

Best Regards.
Feng,Dong