Re: Native OS ld vs GNU ld

[Ian Lance Taylor <iant at google dot com>]

"Vardhan, Sundara (GE Infra, Energy)" <sundara.vardhan@ge.com> writes:

> Some time back, I was adviced that I use the native linker and not the
> gnu ld on AIX and Solaris. Of course, the reason was I had raised a
> question in this forum regarding some errors on link time when I used a
> GNU ld on AIX. Upon switching to native ld, the link errors went away
> and I have been happyily chugging along. But now I have a requirement
> where in, there is a proposition to do away with native linker and try
> to use all GNU including the ld. When I switched the linker to GNU ld, I
> start getting link failed errors and no program of mine ever links. 
>
> Is there a reason for me to stick with the native linker or should gnu
> ld work fine on AIX etc. Maybe I did not build it correctly. Is there
> any write-up or collection of write-ups which may help me with this
> problem. Or if any one can advice me on what I may or should have done
> to get this working. I would very much appreciate your help and advice.
> I hope my explaination of the problem is good enough, else will be happy
> to provide more information.

In the past, each new AIX release added new required linker behaviour.
Nobody has kept GNU ld up to date with the changes to AIX.  So in
general GNU ld is not reliable on new versions of AIX.  That will be
the case until somebody takes the time to reverse engineer what AIX is
doing and update GNU ld to support it.

In general gcc should work with AIX ld.  Why do you need to use GNU ld
on AIX?

Ian