Re: timestamp in coff header breaks ld testsuite

[egor duda <deo at logos-m dot ru>]

Hi!

Friday, 09 November, 2001 Nick Clifton nickc@cambridge.redhat.com wrote:

>>   pei-based targets write a timestamp to object file header and it
>> breaks some of testcases in ld testsuite. _bfd_ecoff_write_object_contents
>> contains a comment about always setting timestamp to 0, but backend
>> overrides timestamp field later.

NC> Which backend is doing this ?

pei in peXXigen.c:809. it's used in cygwin ld, for instance.

>> What is the best way to deal with it -- write a separate utility
>> to zero timestamp in already created object, or pass some flag to
>> backend that timestamp should be zeroed? i wonder if any target needs
>> this field to hold actual build timestamp at all?

NC> It is possible that some OSes do require the timestamp field to be
NC> non-zero, and in such cases the backend must insert that value.  For
NC> these targets we would have to mark the ld tests as expected
NC> failures.  In general though the timestamp is probably unnecessary and
NC> the backends should leave it as zero.

yes, i see. it's a pity, however, that because of difference in 4
(possibly) unused bytes we get XFAIL and thus may miss some real bug.

that's why i thought about something like pe-tool utility so that
testsuite can run 'pe-tool --clear-timestamp' before comparing
objects.

Egor.            mailto:deo@logos-m.ru ICQ 5165414 FidoNet 2:5020/496.19