Subject: Re: [PATCH] realtek: rtl8xxxu: Use const init arrays

From: Joe Perches <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 01 Oct 2016 13:00:58 -0700

On Sat, 2016-10-01 at 14:53 -0400, Jes Sorensen wrote:
> Joe Perches <[email-masked]> writes:
> > Make the init arrays const to reduce data.
> > $ size drivers/net/wireless/realtek/rtl8xxxu/built-in.o* (allyesconfig: x86-32)
> >    text	   data	    bss	    dec	    hex	filename
> >   80107	  13651	     58	  93816	  16e78	drivers/net/wireless/realtek/rtl8xxxu/built-in.o.new
> >   65303	  28435	     58	  93796	  16e64	drivers/net/wireless/realtek/rtl8xxxu/built-in.o.old
> In total you grow the kernel by 20 bytes. You reduce the data segment
> substantially while growing the text segment instead.

No, not really.   The alignment boundaries move a bit for
this particular compilation.  It could go the other way for
a different compiler version or set of CONFIG options.

What's important is multiple pages of .data move to .rodata.