Re: binutils 2.19.92 linker broke with --as-needed flag

[Eric Christopher <echristo at gmail dot com>]

On Wed, Mar 27, 2013 at 7:36 PM, Alan Modra <amodra@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Wed, Mar 27, 2013 at 06:54:39PM -0700, Vincent Wen wrote:
>> Alan,
>>
>> Who is the MIPS maintainer?
>
> Theoretically Eric Christopher, but binutils/MAINTAINERS lists an
> old email address and it's been a while since we've seen him around
> here.  Eric, can you comment on the code below?
>

Yeah, it's been a while. Sorry about that. I'll update everything at some point
though I'm no longer doing anything with MIPS (or mn10300) so while I can
pitch in on occasion I could also move myself to write-after-approval
if you'd like.

>> On Wed, Mar 27, 2013 at 5:02 PM, Alan Modra <amodra@gmail.com> wrote:
>> > On Wed, Mar 27, 2013 at 10:24:51AM -0700, Vincent Wen wrote:
>> >> Alan,
>> >>
>> >> I'd like to know whether the patch for this issue is accepted or not?
>> >
>> > That really is up to one of the MIPS maintainers.  As I said in
>> > http://sourceware.org/ml/binutils/2013-02/msg00159.html the MIPS backend
>> > wants _GLOBAL_OFFSET_TABLE_ dynamic for some reason.
>> >
>> >   bh = NULL;
>> >   if (! (_bfd_generic_link_add_one_symbol
>> >          (info, abfd, "_GLOBAL_OFFSET_TABLE_", BSF_GLOBAL, s,
>> >           0, NULL, FALSE, get_elf_backend_data (abfd)->collect, &bh)))
>> >     return FALSE;
>> >
>> >   h = (struct elf_link_hash_entry *) bh;
>> >   h->non_elf = 0;
>> >   h->def_regular = 1;
>> >   h->type = STT_OBJECT;
>> >   elf_hash_table (info)->hgot = h;
>> >
>> >   if (info->shared
>> >       && ! bfd_elf_link_record_dynamic_symbol (info, h))
>> >     return FALSE;
>> >
>> > I think that is just plain wrong, but I don't know the history of this
>> > code.

It's been that way since the original revision and that's a long long time
ago. :) I think I noticed it at one point and thought it odd, but I'm not sure
what it was actually for... some oddity on SGI machines that depended
upon a dynamic _GLOBAL_OFFSET_TABLE_ that only appeared if there
were entries? If there's anything weird the easiest assumption is "SGI
was weird".

Sorry I couldn't be more help.

-eric