checkpatch: add warning for avoiding .L prefix symbols in assembly files

objtool requires that all code must be contained in an ELF symbol.  Symbol
names that have a '.L' prefix do not emit symbol table entries, as they
have special meaning for the assembler.

'.L' prefixed symbols can be used within a code region, but should be
avoided for denoting a range of code via 'SYM_*_START/END' annotations.

Add a new check to emit a warning on finding the usage of '.L' symbols for
'.S' files, if it denotes range of code via SYM_*_START/END annotation
pair.

Link: https://lkml.kernel.org/r/[email protected]
Link: https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/[email protected]
Signed-off-by: Aditya Srivastava <[email protected]>
Suggested-by: Mark Brown <[email protected]>
Acked-by: Joe Perches <[email protected]>
Acked-by: Nick Desaulniers <[email protected]>
Cc: Aditya Srivastava <[email protected]>
Cc: Lukas Bulwahn <[email protected]>
Cc: Dwaipayan Ray <[email protected]>
Cc: Josh Poimboeuf <[email protected]>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <[email protected]>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <[email protected]>

1 files changed, 7 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/scripts/checkpatch.pl b/scripts/checkpatch.pl
index a04df2657d49..d8793bdbc492 100755
--- a/scripts/checkpatch.pl
+++ b/scripts/checkpatch.pl
@@ -3599,6 +3599,13 @@ sub process {
 			}
 		}
 
+# check for .L prefix local symbols in .S files
+		if ($realfile =~ /\.S$/ &&
+		    $line =~ /^\+\s*(?:[A-Z]+_)?SYM_[A-Z]+_(?:START|END)(?:_[A-Z_]+)?\s*\(\s*\.L/) {
+			WARN("AVOID_L_PREFIX",
+			     "Avoid using '.L' prefixed local symbol names for denoting a range of code via 'SYM_*_START/END' annotations; see Documentation/asm-annotations.rst\n" . $herecurr);
+		}
+
 # check we are in a valid source file C or perl if not then ignore this hunk
 		next if ($realfile !~ /\.(h|c|pl|dtsi|dts)$/);