Re: libtool reloadable object files versus multilib

[Alexandre Oliva <aoliva at redhat dot com>]

On Jun  6, 2003, David Edelsohn <dje@watson.ibm.com> wrote:

> Generating the reloadable object invokes LD directly, not using CC
> to invoke the linker.

That's because $CC seldom accepts or does the right thing when used
for creating a reloadable object file.

> 1) the fragile computation of maximum command length

The computed value is intentionally lower than the actual, such that
there is a significant amount of excess that implicit arguments passed
by the compiler driver or flags such as linker emulation can be added
without having to recompute the exact command-line length.

> 2) multilib target library not defining multilib-specific LD in libtool,
> which may be difficult or impossible because libtool does not necessarily
> know options for target linker, i.e., it may not be GNU ld.

libtool knows whether the linker is GNU ld or not, and it can behave
accordingly.  E.g., there is code to handle both IRIX and GNU ld in
the irix6 configurations.  There's no reason why we can't do the same
for AIX.  All we need is someone who knows the right flags to pass,
and post the patch to teach libtool how to do it.

-- 
Alexandre Oliva   Enjoy Guarana', see http://www.ic.unicamp.br/~oliva/
Red Hat GCC Developer                 aoliva@{redhat.com, gcc.gnu.org}
CS PhD student at IC-Unicamp        oliva@{lsd.ic.unicamp.br, gnu.org}
Free Software Evangelist                Professional serial bug killer