Re: PATCH: Support LD_SYMBOLIC and LD_SYMBOLIC_FUNCTIONS

["H. J. Lu" <hjl at lucon dot org>]

On Thu, Jan 25, 2007 at 04:28:25PM +0000, Nick Clifton wrote:
> Hi H.J.
> 
> > Paul Brook wrote:
> >I agree with Dan that using environment variables to control linker 
> >behavior is a really bad idea. People are liable to put in in their 
> >.profile because "It makes things go faster", then complain when things 
> >mysteriously break.
> 
> Agreed.
> 
> It also makes understanding bug reports from users very much harder if 
> they forget to tell us that this environment variable is set.
> 
> At the very least H.J. you ought to extend your patch so that the linker 
> clearly tells the user that it is changing its behaviour because of an 
> environment variable.

We have

[hjl@gnu-2 ld]$ grep getenv *.c
ldemul.c:  char *from_outside = getenv (TARGET_ENVIRON);
ldmain.c:  demangling = getenv ("COLLECT_NO_DEMANGLE") == NULL;
ldmain.c:  emulation = getenv (EMULATION_ENVIRON);

Linker does support environment variable.

> 
> But even with that change I would be unhappy about accepting the patch. 
>   Is it really that much easier to set an environment variable for a 
> particular package, as opposed to say, altering its Makefile or build 
> script ?

Can you try to enable -Bsymbolic-functions for all or selective
packages, e.g. GTK+, Pango, Firefox, Open Office, ...  in a distro,
like FC6 or FC7?


H.J.