Re: XCOFF64 bfd changes

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

   Date: Fri, 7 Apr 2000 16:54:25 -0500
   From: Clinton Popetz <cpopetz@cygnus.com>

   *** bfd/coff-rs6000-64.c	Wed Dec 31 18:00:00 1969
   --- bfd/coff-rs6000-64.c	Wed Mar 29 13:50:20 2000

Please use a different name which is unique in 8.3.  Run doschk to
check.  We don't worry about it too much, but we might as well avoid
adding yet another problem.

   + #include "coff-rs6000.c"

I don't like this approach.  I know that BFD uses it a lot, for
historical reasons.  But this is another thing I'd rather we tried to
avoid in new code.

The way to do this is to use backend functions.  I happen to like the
ECOFF support, since I wrote pretty much all of it.  We support two
different kinds of ECOFF in different sizes without any bizarre file
inclusion.

   *** include/coff/rs6000.h	1999/05/03 07:29:03	1.1.1.1
   --- include/coff/rs6000.h	2000/04/07 21:32:24

Adding ifdefs in this file is also problematical.  It becomes harder
to understand how to use the files in include/coff.  These files are
sometimes included by machine independent files.  Most of the code in
include/coff avoids ifdefs, with the exception of the PE support.

Neither of these two issues are show-stoppers for this patch.  But I
strongly encourage you to discuss a possible design on the binutils
list before implementing it.

Ian