Re: timestamp in coff header breaks ld testsuite

[Nick Clifton <nickc at cambridge dot redhat dot com>]

Hi Egor,

>   pei-based targets write a timestamp to object file header and it
> breaks some of testcases in ld testsuite. _bfd_ecoff_write_object_contents
> contains a comment about always setting timestamp to 0, but backend
> overrides timestamp field later.

Which backend is doing this ?

> What is the best way to deal with it -- write a separate utility
> to zero timestamp in already created object, or pass some flag to
> backend that timestamp should be zeroed? i wonder if any target needs
> this field to hold actual build timestamp at all?

It is possible that some OSes do require the timestamp field to be
non-zero, and in such cases the backend must insert that value.  For
these targets we would have to mark the ld tests as expected
failures.  In general though the timestamp is probably unnecessary and
the backends should leave it as zero.

Cheers
        Nick