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building for sandbox, warning: "__BIG_ENDIAN" is not defined

DISCUSSION Robert P. J. Day 2 participants 4 messages Dec 22, 2009 – Dec 23, 2009

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#0 lore raw

perhaps showing my ignorance of how big vs little endian should be
implemented, but in configuring and building the sandbox version, i get:

...
CC common/environment.o
In file included from common/environment.c:37:
include/envfs.h:47:23: warning: "__BIG_ENDIAN" is not defined
...

this isn't surprising since, as i read it, because this is x86_64,
it's the little-endian headers that are included, but the envfs.h header contains the preprocessor checking:

#ifndef __BYTE_ORDER
#error "No byte order defined in __BYTE_ORDER"
#endif

#if __BYTE_ORDER == __LITTLE_ENDIAN
... snip ...
#elif __BYTE_ORDER == __BIG_ENDIAN
... snip ...

clearly(?), depending on which endianness is being used, one or the
other of __LITTLE_ENDIAN or __BIG_ENDIAN won't be defined, right? so, no matter what, *one* of those tests is going to generate a warning.

am i reading that correctly? is there a proper way to handle
endianness that doesn't generate a preprocessor warning? thanks.

rday
--

========================================================================
Robert P. J. Day Waterloo, Ontario, CANADA

Linux Consulting, Training and Kernel Pedantry.

Web page:                                          http://crashcourse.ca
Twitter:                                       http://twitter.com/rpjday

========================================================================

_______________________________________________
barebox mailing list
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#1 lore raw
Quoted 19 lines · Robert P. J. Day

perhaps showing my ignorance of how big vs little endian should be
implemented, but in configuring and building the sandbox version, i get:

...
CC common/environment.o
In file included from common/environment.c:37:
include/envfs.h:47:23: warning: "__BIG_ENDIAN" is not defined
...

this isn't surprising since, as i read it, because this is x86_64,
it's the little-endian headers that are included, but the envfs.h header contains the preprocessor checking:

#ifndef __BYTE_ORDER
#error "No byte order defined in __BYTE_ORDER"
#endif

Quoted 8 lines

#if __BYTE_ORDER == __LITTLE_ENDIAN
... snip ...
#elif __BYTE_ORDER == __BIG_ENDIAN
... snip ...

clearly(?), depending on which endianness is being used, one or the
other of __LITTLE_ENDIAN or __BIG_ENDIAN won't be defined, right? so, no matter what, *one* of those tests is going to generate a warning.

Hm, in glibc both are defined like this:

#define __LITTLE_ENDIAN 1234
#define __BIG_ENDIAN 4321

In the kernel (and barebox too) only one of them is defined depending on the endianess. I wonder why we do not define both, too.

Digging a bit further...

This part of include/envfs.h is copied from include/cramfs/cramfs_fs.h. The cramfs header file is copied from U-Boot, but as the U-Boot guys found out cramfs is always in host order and thus does not need byteswap functions (see http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.boot-loaders.u-boot/22846)
But that's another story, I think we should keep the environment in little endian order to be able to generate a envfs image on the compile host.

Sascha

Signature · 9 lines
Pengutronix e.K.                           |                             |
Industrial Linux Solutions                 | http://www.pengutronix.de/  |
Peiner Str. 6-8, 31137 Hildesheim, Germany | Phone: +49-5121-206917-0    |
Amtsgericht Hildesheim, HRA 2686           | Fax:   +49-5121-206917-5555 |

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#2 lore raw
Quoted 40 lines · Sascha Hauer
Quoted 24 lines · Robert P. J. Day

perhaps showing my ignorance of how big vs little endian should be
implemented, but in configuring and building the sandbox version, i get:

...
CC common/environment.o
In file included from common/environment.c:37:
include/envfs.h:47:23: warning: "__BIG_ENDIAN" is not defined
...

this isn't surprising since, as i read it, because this is x86_64,
it's the little-endian headers that are included, but the envfs.h header contains the preprocessor checking:

#ifndef __BYTE_ORDER
#error "No byte order defined in __BYTE_ORDER"
#endif

#if __BYTE_ORDER == __LITTLE_ENDIAN
... snip ...
#elif __BYTE_ORDER == __BIG_ENDIAN
... snip ...

Quoted 4 lines

clearly(?), depending on which endianness is being used, one or
the other of __LITTLE_ENDIAN or __BIG_ENDIAN won't be defined, right? so, no matter what, *one* of those tests is going to generate a warning.

Hm, in glibc both are defined like this:

#define __LITTLE_ENDIAN 1234
#define __BIG_ENDIAN 4321

In the kernel (and barebox too) only one of them is defined depending on the endianess. I wonder why we do not define both, too.

Digging a bit further...

Quoted 8 lines

This part of include/envfs.h is copied from include/cramfs/cramfs_fs.h. The cramfs header file is copied from U-Boot, but as the U-Boot guys found out cramfs is always in host order and thus does not need byteswap functions (see
http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.boot-loaders.u-boot/22846) But that's another story, I think we should keep the environment in little endian order to be able to generate a envfs image on the compile host.

soooo ... not sure what you're proposing here. it appears that the
warning above is just a warning, doesn't break anything so i guess it could be left as is, but it just looks messy. so what are you suggesting? and maybe i'll just leave that for others higher up the food chain to deal with.

rday
--

========================================================================
Robert P. J. Day Waterloo, Ontario, CANADA

Linux Consulting, Training and Kernel Pedantry.

Web page:                                          http://crashcourse.ca
Twitter:                                       http://twitter.com/rpjday

========================================================================

_______________________________________________
barebox mailing list
[email protected]
http://lists.infradead.org/mailman/listinfo/barebox

#3 lore raw
Quoted 51 lines · Robert P. J. Day
Quoted 40 lines · Sascha Hauer
Quoted 24 lines · Robert P. J. Day

perhaps showing my ignorance of how big vs little endian should be
implemented, but in configuring and building the sandbox version, i get:

...
CC common/environment.o
In file included from common/environment.c:37:
include/envfs.h:47:23: warning: "__BIG_ENDIAN" is not defined
...

this isn't surprising since, as i read it, because this is x86_64,
it's the little-endian headers that are included, but the envfs.h header contains the preprocessor checking:

#ifndef __BYTE_ORDER
#error "No byte order defined in __BYTE_ORDER"
#endif

#if __BYTE_ORDER == __LITTLE_ENDIAN
... snip ...
#elif __BYTE_ORDER == __BIG_ENDIAN
... snip ...

Quoted 4 lines

clearly(?), depending on which endianness is being used, one or
the other of __LITTLE_ENDIAN or __BIG_ENDIAN won't be defined, right? so, no matter what, *one* of those tests is going to generate a warning.

Hm, in glibc both are defined like this:

#define __LITTLE_ENDIAN 1234
#define __BIG_ENDIAN 4321

In the kernel (and barebox too) only one of them is defined depending on the endianess. I wonder why we do not define both, too.

Digging a bit further...

Quoted 8 lines

This part of include/envfs.h is copied from include/cramfs/cramfs_fs.h. The cramfs header file is copied from U-Boot, but as the U-Boot guys found out cramfs is always in host order and thus does not need byteswap functions (see
http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.boot-loaders.u-boot/22846) But that's another story, I think we should keep the environment in little endian order to be able to generate a envfs image on the compile host.

Quoted 3 lines

soooo ... not sure what you're proposing here. it appears that the
warning above is just a warning, doesn't break anything so i guess it could be left as is, but it just looks messy.

Yes, it looks messy and we should fix this, but so far I don't know what to do best, so I just wrote up what I found out. I tend to define both __*_ENDIAN in any case.

Sascha

Signature · 9 lines
Pengutronix e.K.                           |                             |
Industrial Linux Solutions                 | http://www.pengutronix.de/  |
Peiner Str. 6-8, 31137 Hildesheim, Germany | Phone: +49-5121-206917-0    |
Amtsgericht Hildesheim, HRA 2686           | Fax:   +49-5121-206917-5555 |

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barebox mailing list
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http://lists.infradead.org/mailman/listinfo/barebox