Re: dynamic relocations against stabs in a shared library

[Ian Lance Taylor <ian@zembu.com>]

   From: Jim Blandy <jimb@cygnus.com>
   Date: 12 Jun 1999 00:08:28 -0500

   If I understand you correctly, GDB should be applying relocs to the
   .stab section before it reads the entries, because certain kinds of
   debugging information can only be expressed using relocs.  If this is
   so, then changing the linker to resolve some relocs early just puts
   off the problem, no?  If the correct solution requires GDB to relocate
   the .stabs, then let's do that, and not make questionable patches to
   BFD.

At one time the debugging information generated by g++ required gdb to
relocate the .stabs section in order to get the correct information.
This is because at one time g++ would generate references to symbols
which were not defined in the shared library.

g++ may or may not act that way today.  I don't know.  It is in any
case a relatively rare situation, so it may or may not be important
for gdb to handle it.

   I find the BFD manual somewhat confusing.  If you could point me at
   the right functions GDB should call to do this in a portable way, that
   would be very helpful.  Can I simply call:

   - bfd_get_dynamic_reloc_upper_bound
   - bfd_canonicalize_dynamic_reloc
   - bfd_perform_relocation?

Something along those lines, yes.  Whether it will really work in
practice, I don't know.

Ian