We currently have to deal with multiple initialization stages in a way
that can be confusing, because certain parts rely on others having been
properly initialized. Most calls consist in adding lists to existing
lists, whose heads are initialized in the declaration so this is easy.
But some calls create new pools and require pools to be properly
initialized. Pools currently are thread-local and as such cannot be
pre-initialized, requiring run-time checks.
All this could be simplified by using multiple boot stages and allowing
functions to be registered at various stages.
One approach might be to use gcc's constructor priorities, but this
requires gcc >= 4.3 which eliminates a wide spectrum of working compilers,
and some versions of certain compilers (like clang 3.0) are known for
silently ignore these priorities.
Instead we can use our own init function registration mechanism. A first
attempt was made using register_function() calls in all constructors but
this made the code more painful.
This patch's approach is different. It creates sections containing
arrays of pointers to "initcall" descriptors. An initcall contains a
pointer to a function and an argument. Each section corresponds to a
specific initialization stage. Each module creates such descriptors
for various calls it requires. The main() function starts by scanning
each of these sections in turn to process these initcalls.
This will make it possible to remove many constructors from various
modules, by simply placing initcalls for the requested functions next
to the keyword lists that need to be called.
A first attempt was made by placing the initcalls directly into the
sections instead of creating an array of pointers, but it becomes
sensitive to the array's alignment which depends on the compiler and
the linker, so it seems too fragile.
For now we support 6 init stages :
- STG_PREPARE : preset variables, tables and list heads
- STG_LOCK : initialize spinlocks and rwlocks
- STG_ALLOC : allocate the required structures
- STG_POOL : create pools
- STG_REGISTER : register static lists (keywords etc)
- STG_INIT : subsystems normal initialization
These ones are declared directly in the files where they are needed
using one of the INITCALL* macros, passing 0 to 3 pointers as
arguments.
The API should possibly be extended to support a return value to give
a status to the caller, and to support a unified API, possibly a bit
more flexibility in the arguments. In this case it might make sense to
support a set of macros to register functions having a different API
and to pass the function type in the initcall itself.
Special thanks to Olivier for showing how to scan sections as this is
not something particularly well documented and exactly what I've been
missing to achieve this.
