Re: PATCH: Support LD_SYMBOLIC and LD_SYMBOLIC_FUNCTIONS

[Paul Brook <paul at codesourcery dot com>]

On Thursday 25 January 2007 13:43, H. J. Lu wrote:
> On Thu, Jan 25, 2007 at 07:58:48AM -0500, Daniel Jacobowitz wrote:
> > On Wed, Jan 24, 2007 at 07:48:07PM -0800, H. J. Lu wrote:
> > > I rebuilt firefox with -Bsymbolic-functions. It significantly reduced
> > > number of relocations in DSOs and improved firefox load time.  This
> > > patch allows me to apply -Bsymbolic-functions on firefox by just
> > > setting LD_SYMBOLIC_FUNCTIONS before compiling it.  It will make it
> > > trivial to rebuild any or all packages with -Bsymbolic-functions and
> > > improve system performance.
> >
> > Just my two cents, but I think this is a horribly bad idea, for the
> > same reason that there isn't a general $LD_OPTIONS variable (or
> > $GCC_OPTIONS).  It will hurt reproducibility.
>
> It is very convenient to use LD_SYMBOLIC_FUNCTIONS on a per package
> bassis. You can set it in a Makefile, script or a rpm spec file in
> the build environment.

If you can set it in a Makefile, you should be able to add it to that 
makefile's LDFLAGS without much more trouble.

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.

Paul