Re: procfs patches for Linux

[hjl@nynexst.com (H.J. Lu)]

> 
> 
> As I understand it, a.out versus ELF is not the issue.  As Mike
> explained it to me, the procfs support is at least somewhat separate
> from the a.out/ELF issue.
> 
> The problem is whether the ELF support can be compiled.  With this
> change, anyone who wants to build the gas snapshots targeted for any ELF
> configuration -- be it i386-linux or powerpc-elf or sparc-solaris or
> anything else -- has to have your latest software, only a few days old.
> 
> Because of the way BFD is set up, core file support is compiled in even
> for cross configurations.  (This is a bug, and I'll happily take patches
> to fix it.)  So the Linux core file support has to compile, because

Will you? Please take a look at below.

> people may be using Linux as a development system for a cross-assembler.


That was what I faced more than 2 years ago while bootstrapping
gcc for Linux in a cross-compile environment. One solution is:

# cd bfd
# mdkir targets
# cd targets

We move all the target stuff from bfd/hosts to bfd/targets. In
bfd/configure, we do:

2. if [ -f $srcdir/targets/target.h ]; then
	link $srcdir/targets/target.h to tsysdep.h.
	link $srcdir/hosts/host.h to hsysdep.h.
	echo include "hsysdep.h" > sysdep.h
	echo include "tsysdep.h" >> sysdep.h
   else
	link $srcdir/hosts/host.h to sysdep.h.
   fi

> 
> I'm not entirely convinced that the switch to ELF as the default for gcc
> and binutils won't screw some of those people, where version numbers
> aren't factored into it in any way.  Have you gotten into the FSF's gcc
> documentation (and, ideally, into the release announcement too) some
> notes about using "linuxaout" if people have older Linux systems?  Or do

Yes. I changed install.texi for gcc. But again, I am not sure if
they will read it.

> you just assume everyone always wants the latest development code,
> stability be damned?
> 
> I'm disabling HAVE_PROCFS for Linux in BFD for now, until you can give
> me something that supports both system environments, with sys/procfs.h
> and without.
> 

I will fix it on the linux side. How about my suggestion to
bfd?

BTW, do you need a patch for elf32.em to fix the -Lxxxx bug?


-- 
H.J. Lu
NYNEX Science and Technology, Inc.			hjl@nynexst.com