Re: [ghudson@MIT.EDU: Re: -Xlinker and LDFLAGS]

[Joe Buck <jbuck at racerx dot synopsys dot com>]

> 
> On Jan 11, 2001, Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org> wrote:
> 
> > Would it be feasible to make gcc understand the linker -R argument for
> > GNU/Linux?  It looks like that would be useful.
> 
> We've gone over this issue in one of the GCC mailing lists.
> 
> GCC only accepts -R on Solaris to be compatible with Sun's C Compiler.
> Supporting -R on GNU/Linux too might give people the impression that
> -R is a portable switch in GCC, and then, they might start asking why
> -R doesn't work on other platforms.

The problem, though, is that GNU ld made a different decision: it accepts
-R on GNU/Linux explicitly for compatibility with Solaris ld; since the
ELF switch, almost every aspect of linking on GNU/Linux was copied from
Solaris.  What's the use of that decision if GCC dissents from it?  Are we
all on the same team or not?

And maybe -R *should* work on any platform where the linker supports
the -R switch.