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Re: Binutuls is broken now.
- To: hjl at lucon dot org
- Subject: Re: Binutuls is broken now.
- From: Hans-Peter Nilsson <hans-peter dot nilsson at axis dot com>
- Date: Mon, 18 Jun 2001 20:20:36 +0200
- CC: hans-peter dot nilsson at axis dot com, binutils at sourceware dot cygnus dot com, nickc at cambridge dot redhat dot com
> Date: Mon, 18 Jun 2001 10:53:03 -0700
> From: "H . J . Lu" <hjl@lucon.org>
> On Mon, Jun 18, 2001 at 07:47:17PM +0200, Hans-Peter Nilsson wrote:
> > > Date: Mon, 18 Jun 2001 10:43:49 -0700
> > > From: "H . J . Lu" <hjl@lucon.org>
> > > What is wrong with my patch?
> >
> > Whether relocatable link from binary is *supposed* to be
> > supported.
>
> The Linux kernel has been using it for a long time. I believe it
> should just work with the proper linker script. Can you give me one
> reason why it won't work?
In general relocatable linking (-r) can't work between object
formats. Bfd says -r can't happen between formats, and object
format backends assume in-bfd:s are of that format when -r. The
binary format may be the exception; no relocs to handle, no
assumptions-giving-SEGV lurking between it and ELF.
> > > Is that ok to back out yours until we
> > > find a solution acceptable to everyone?
> >
> > No. Why back it out? There are no binutils guidelines that
>
> Because your patch changes the linker behavior and breaks the existing
> code which uses it. Unless the corrent behavior is broken, I don't
> think we should change it.
The existing behaviour (before my patch) was broken for reasons
I explained when that patch was submitted, briefly as above.
I do believe objcopy can be used in the Linux kernel example you
gave. It seems cleaner than letting ld do the format
conversion, but that might be a matter of taste.
Nevertheless, changed behaviour is changed behaviour. I think
we can afford to wait for head-maintainers opinions. Right?
brgds, H-P