Introduce new objtool features and a klp-build script to generate
livepatch modules using a source .patch as input.
This builds on concepts from the longstanding out-of-tree kpatch
project which began in 2012 and has been used for many years to
generate livepatch modules for production kernels. However, this is a
complete rewrite which incorporates hard-earned lessons from 12+
years of maintaining kpatch.
Key improvements compared to kpatch-build:
- Integrated with objtool: Leverages objtool's existing control-flow
graph analysis to help detect changed functions.
- Works on vmlinux.o: Supports late-linked objects, making it
compatible with LTO, IBT, and similar.
- Simplified code base: ~3k fewer lines of code.
- Upstream: No more out-of-tree #ifdef hacks, far less cruft.
- Cleaner internals: Vastly simplified logic for
symbol/section/reloc inclusion and special section extraction.
- Robust __LINE__ macro handling: Avoids false positive binary diffs
caused by the __LINE__ macro by introducing a fix-patch-lines
script which injects #line directives into the source .patch to
preserve the original line numbers at compile time.
- Disassemble code with libopcodes instead of running objdump
(Alexandre Chartre)
- Disassemble support (-d option to objtool) by Alexandre Chartre,
which supports the decoding of various Linux kernel code generation
specials such as alternatives:
- Function validation tracing support (Alexandre Chartre)
- Various -ffunction-sections fixes (Josh Poimboeuf)
- Clang AutoFDO (Automated Feedback-Directed Optimizations) support
(Josh Poimboeuf)
- Misc fixes and cleanups (Borislav Petkov, Chen Ni, Dylan Hatch, Ingo
Molnar, John Wang, Josh Poimboeuf, Pankaj Raghav, Peter Zijlstra,
Thorsten Blum)
* tag 'objtool-core-2025-12-01' of git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/tip/tip: (129 commits)
objtool: Fix segfault on unknown alternatives
objtool: Build with disassembly can fail when including bdf.h
objtool: Trim trailing NOPs in alternative
objtool: Add wide output for disassembly
objtool: Compact output for alternatives with one instruction
objtool: Improve naming of group alternatives
objtool: Add Function to get the name of a CPU feature
objtool: Provide access to feature and flags of group alternatives
objtool: Fix address references in alternatives
objtool: Disassemble jump table alternatives
objtool: Disassemble exception table alternatives
objtool: Print addresses with alternative instructions
objtool: Disassemble group alternatives
objtool: Print headers for alternatives
objtool: Preserve alternatives order
objtool: Add the --disas=<function-pattern> action
objtool: Do not validate IBT for .return_sites and .call_sites
objtool: Improve tracing of alternative instructions
objtool: Add functions to better name alternatives
objtool: Identify the different types of alternatives
...