3.3.1 - random bytes in object files

[Greg Schafer <gschafer at zip dot com dot au>]

Hi

Should I always expect the exact same bytes in my compiled object files?

I would have thought "yes". And this has always been the case up until now.
While testing out 3.3.1 I noticed that my installations of libstdc++ were
not identical.

I've managed to narrow it down and the cause seems to be due to
-ffunction-sections

This is taken from libstdc++/src/io-inst.cc

----------
#include <ios>
#include <iomanip>
#include <iostream>

namespace std
{
  // basic_ios
  template class basic_ios<char>;
#ifdef _GLIBCPP_USE_WCHAR_T
  template class basic_ios<wchar_t>;
#endif

  // iomanip
  template class _Setfill<char>;
  template _Setfill<char> setfill(char);
#ifdef _GLIBCPP_USE_WCHAR_T
  template class _Setfill<wchar_t>;
  template _Setfill<wchar_t> setfill(wchar_t);
#endif

  // iostream
  template class basic_iostream<char>;
#ifdef _GLIBCPP_USE_WCHAR_T
  template class basic_iostream<wchar_t>;
#endif
} // namespace std
----------

$ g++ -ffunction-sections -c io-inst.cc -o io-inst.o
$ mv io-inst.o io-inst.o.XXX
$ g++ -ffunction-sections -c io-inst.cc -o io-inst.o
$ strip io-inst.o*
$ cmp -lb io-inst.o.XXX io-inst.o
19646 170 x     70 8
19647 121 Q    144 d
19648 121 Q    122 R
19649 145 e    105 E
19650  64 4    127 W

Diffing objdump output shows me this:-

-132 .text._GLOBAL__I__ZNKSt8ios_base6getlocEvio_inst.ccxQQe4a 0000001c
00000000  00000000  00002590  2**1
+132 .text._GLOBAL__I__ZNKSt8ios_base6getlocEvio_inst.cc8dREWa 0000001c
00000000  00000000  00002590  2**1

-RELOCATION RECORDS FOR
[.text._GLOBAL__I__ZNKSt8ios_base6getlocEvio_inst.ccxQQe4a]: (none)
+RELOCATION RECORDS FOR
[.text._GLOBAL__I__ZNKSt8ios_base6getlocEvio_inst.cc8dREWa]: (none)



So what's up here? Is this a binutils problem or something wrong with the
compiler? If someone can confirm that I'm not going nuts, I'll happily file
a bug if indeed it is one.

Thanks for gcc.
Greg