Re: big TOC

[David Edelsohn <dje at watson dot ibm dot com>]

>>>>> Dave Love writes:

Dave> At one time if the link failed, it would direct you to node `LINKFAIL'
Dave> in the g77 manual.  I didn't realize that bit had gone from
Dave> f/Makefile.in.  Anyway, the workaround is documented there.

	Note: the recommendations in the g77 documentation are superceded
by the solution to upgrade the AIX linker to fileset 4.1.5.3.

Dave> Doesn't this fail if use use the GNU linker?  We messed with
Dave> f/Makefile.in's F77_LDFLAGS (in the absence of configure support at
Dave> the time) to check for that after someone complained.  I guess a patch
Dave> is in order now to remove F77_LDFLAGS.  I'll make one.

	Yes, this fails with the GNU linker.  However, the GNU linker has
so many failings with respect to AIX 4.1.5, AIX 4.2, and AIX 4.3 that it
essentially is unusable except for trivial applications.  Lack of support
for -bbigtoc is just one of the limitations.

	The GNU linker was ported to AIX using AIX 3.2.5 as a reference.
That was the last in the AIX 3 release series.  Numerous changes occurred
in AIX 4.1 and still more to add 64-bit support in AIX 4.3

	While the AIX linker has problems, if one wants to use all the
features of AIX 4, one essentially must deal with the AIX linker as the
GNU linker no longer is a viable substitute on IBM-supported releases of
AIX (IBM withdrew support for AIX 3.2.5 last Fall/Winter).

David