kernel hacking: GCC optimization for better debug experience (-Og)

Hi all,
I have posted this series several months ago but interrupted by personal affairs. Now I get time to complete this task. Thanks for all of the reviewers.

I know some kernel developers was searching for a method to dissable GCC optimizations, probably they want to apply GCC '-O0' option. But since Linux kernel relies on GCC optimization to remove some dead code, so '-O0' just breaks the build. They do need this because they want to debug kernel with qemu, simics, kgtp or kgdb.

Thanks for the GCC '-Og' optimization level introduced in GCC 4.8, which offers a reasonable level of optimization while maintaining fast compilation and a good debugging experience. It is similar to '-O1' while perferring to keep debug ability over runtime speed. With '-Og', we can build a kernel with better debug ability and little performance drop after some simple change.

In this series, firstly introduce a new config CONFIG_NO_AUTO_INLINE after two fixes for this new option. With this option, only functions explicitly marked with "inline" will be inlined. This will allow the function tracer to trace more functions because it only traces functions that the compiler has not inlined.

Then introduce new config CC_OPTIMIZE_FOR_DEBUGGING which apply '-Og' optimization level for whole kernel, with a simple fix in fix_to_virt(). Currently I have only tested this option on x86 and ARM platform. Other platforms should also work but probably need some compiling fixes as what having done in this series. I leave that to who want to try this debug option.

Comparison of vmlinux size: a bit smaller.

w/o CONFIG_CC_OPTIMIZE_FOR_DEBUGGING
$ size vmlinux
text data bss dec hex filename
22665554 9709674 2920908 35296136 21a9388 vmlinux

w/ CONFIG_CC_OPTIMIZE_FOR_DEBUGGING
$ size vmlinux
text data bss dec hex filename
21499032 10102758 2920908 34522698 20ec64a vmlinux

Comparison of system performance: a bit drop (~6%).

    This benchmark of kernel compilation is suggested by Ingo Molnar.
    https://lkml.org/lkml/2018/5/2/74

    Preparation: Set cpufreq to 'performance'.
    for ((cpu=0; cpu<120; cpu++)); do
      G=/sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu$cpu/cpufreq/scaling_governor
      [ -f $G ] && echo performance > $G
    done

    w/o CONFIG_CC_OPTIMIZE_FOR_DEBUGGING
    $ perf stat --repeat 5 --null --pre                 '\
        cp -a kernel ../kernel.copy.$(date +%s);         \
        rm -rf *;                                        \
        git checkout .;                                  \
        echo 1 > /proc/sys/vm/drop_caches;               \
        find ../kernel* -type f | xargs cat >/dev/null;  \
        make -j kernel >/dev/null;                       \
        make clean >/dev/null 2>&1;                      \
        sync                                            '\
                                                         \
        make -j8 >/dev/null

     Performance counter stats for 'make -j8' (5 runs):

        219.764246652 seconds time elapsed                   ( +-  0.78% )

    w/ CONFIG_CC_OPTIMIZE_FOR_DEBUGGING
    $ perf stat --repeat 5 --null --pre                 '\
        cp -a kernel ../kernel.copy.$(date +%s);         \
        rm -rf *;                                        \
        git checkout .;                                  \
        echo 1 > /proc/sys/vm/drop_caches;               \
        find ../kernel* -type f | xargs cat >/dev/null;  \
        make -j kernel >/dev/null;                       \
        make clean >/dev/null 2>&1;                      \
        sync                                            '\
                                                         \
        make -j8 >/dev/null

    Performance counter stats for 'make -j8' (5 runs):

         233.574187771 seconds time elapsed                  ( +-  0.19% )

v3:
o Take suggestions from Masahiro Yamada.
v2:
o rebase on top of mainline.

Changbin Du (4):
x86/mm: declare check_la57_support() as inline
kernel hacking: new config NO_AUTO_INLINE to disable compiler
auto-inline optimizations
ARM: mm: fix build error in fix_to_virt with
CONFIG_CC_OPTIMIZE_FOR_DEBUGGING
kernel hacking: new config CC_OPTIMIZE_FOR_DEBUGGING to apply GCC -Og
optimization

 Makefile                     | 11 +++++++++++
 arch/arm/mm/mmu.c            |  2 +-
 arch/x86/kernel/head64.c     |  2 +-
 include/linux/compiler-gcc.h |  2 +-
 include/linux/compiler.h     |  2 +-
 init/Kconfig                 | 20 ++++++++++++++++++++
 kernel/configs/tiny.config   |  1 +
 lib/Kconfig.debug            | 17 +++++++++++++++++
 8 files changed, 53 insertions(+), 4 deletions(-)

2.17.1