Re: GNU-ld behaviour does not match native linker behaviour

[Ian Lance Taylor <ian at zembu dot com>]

   Date: Wed, 8 Dec 1999 12:41:26 -0800
   From: Nick Clifton <nickc@cygnus.com>

   : Note that change 2 must not be made for the a.out object file format.
   : a.out defines a different, and rather odd, procedure for linking
   : against common symbols in archives.  See aout_link_check_ar_symbols in
   : aoutx.h.

   I think that this is the real problem.  There is no way that we can
   know what the target file format is when we are creating the archive,
   so we cannot decide whether we should include commons in the symbol
   map or not.

Sure, we can.  Archives have a format just like object files do.  Look
at coff-rs6000.c support to see how BFD can support a completely
different archive format.

   (As an aside is there any reason why an archive cannot
   contain object file sof multiple file formats ?)

No, there isn't.  But it's reasonable to not provide a symbol map for
such an archive.

Actually, that suggests a different approach.  Instead of replacing
compute_and_write_armap, just have that function call a new BFD target
function to decide whether to include a symbol in the archive map.  In
that case we would make the decision based on the archive member.

Ian