Re: [PATCH] ARM: Use different linker path for hardfloat ABI

[Jakub Jelinek <jakub at redhat dot com>]

On Wed, Apr 04, 2012 at 09:18:59AM +1200, Michael Hope wrote:
> >> The subdirectories could be called fred and jim and it would still work.
> >> ?The only thing required is that this part of the naming scheme be
> >> agreed amongst the distros.
> >>
> >> This looks to me like it's turning into a bike-shed painting excerise
> >> between the distros out there. ?That's really sad.
> >
> > I don't think we ever even had the discussion: Debian invented their
> > Debian-internal scheme for managing multiple ABIs. ?They have in the past
> > used patched versions of gcc, as in the case of x86_64.
> 
> (cc'ed cross-distro as the discussion is also going on there[1].  This
> patch continues that)
> 
> I like the idea of incompatible binaries having different loaders.
> The path doesn't matter but the concept does.  Like i686/x86_64, it
> gives distros the option to install different binaries alongside each
> other for compatibility, performance, or upgrade reasons.  The
> compatibility cost is nice and low and lets Debian do some interesting
> cross development things.

Does the dynamic linker itself contain any routines that depend on the
soft/hard ABI?  That would quite surprise me, so I don't see the point of
having different dynamic linkers for those ABIs.  One dynamic linker should
handle both just fine.

> No one has released a hard float based distro yet.  We have time to
> discuss and fix this so we don't get in the crazy situation where a
> third party binary only runs on some distros.

Isn't e.g. Fedora 17/armv7hl a hard float based distro?

	Jakub