Before, we would initialize many fields twice: first
by filling the structure with zeros, and then a second
time with the real values. We can let the compiler do
the job for us, avoiding one copy.
A downside of this patch is that text gets slightly
bigger. This is because all zero() calls are effectively
inlined:
$ size build/.libs/systemd
text data bss dec hex filename
before 897737 107300 2560 1007597 f5fed build/.libs/systemd
after 897873 107300 2560 1007733 f6075 build/.libs/systemd
… actually less than 1‰.
A few asserts that the parameter is not null had to be removed. I
don't think this changes much, because first, it is quite unlikely
for the assert to fail, and second, an immediate SEGV is almost as
good as an assert.
We finally got the OK from all contributors with non-trivial commits to
relicense systemd from GPL2+ to LGPL2.1+.
Some udev bits continue to be GPL2+ for now, but we are looking into
relicensing them too, to allow free copy/paste of all code within
systemd.
The bits that used to be MIT continue to be MIT.
The big benefit of the relicensing is that closed source code may now
link against libsystemd-login.so and friends.
Zbigniew Jędrzejewski-Szmek
Harald Hoyer
Lennart Poettering
Kay Sievers