Re: [PATCH 1/3] Add native ELF and LTO support in collect2

[Andi Kleen <andi at firstfloor dot org>]

Dave Korn <dave.korn.cygwin@gmail.com> writes:

> On 11/10/2010 16:54, Andi Kleen wrote:
>>>   I'm not clear here: by "an ELF plugin", do you mean one that would return
>>> the native ELF symbols rather than LTO ones?  Wouldn't need to be a new plugin
>>> at all, that could easily be done by sending a plugin option to the existing one.
>> 
>> The existing plugin only does LTO, not native ELF.
>
>   That didn't make anything clearer, I already understood that you were
> talking about a plugin that "does" something with ELF, I was trying to get you
> to tell me what that "something" was.  I'm going to assume the answer
> to my

Well you're making the suggestions, so I assume you know what the code
you're suggesting to use, actually does.


> first question was "yes", and your phrase "an ELF plugin" does indeed mean one
> that would read the ELF native symbol table rather than the LTO symtab section.

Yes.

>   But I think you're missing my point: collect2 "does" all those other things
> *by means of* looking at the symbol table, doesn't it?  Which is what
> the

Actually no: it has some more knowledge, although it's mostly symbol
table today. At least some of the changes I plan to implement -- and why 
I wrote all this in the first place -- will require looking at all
sections.

>   Ah, that's actually a problem that would require libltdl, and even then
> might not be possible on all host platforms.  Which is a shame, because I'd
> really like it if we could control the proliferation of target object-format
> dependent code and have it somehow centralized or abstracted, and the
> linker

If you're worrying about COFF: collect2 already has native COFF support.

-Andi

-- 
ak@linux.intel.com -- Speaking for myself only.