Changes to an ABI for -fpic and -fPIC

[Eric Devolder]

All,

Could somebody provide me with a pointer to information/documentation on the
changes that GNU/Egcs makes to an ABI in order to accomodate -fpic and -fPIC?

Normally position independent code and data utilizes multiple registers to serve
as base pointers where subsequent code and data references are offsets from
these base pointers.

For example, the GNU/Egcs targets for M68K and PPC implement a SVR4 (more or
less) ABI which doesn't explicitly call out pic conventions, yet I observe -fpic
and -fPIC being utilized by members of this group. I've experimented some to
observe the changes in instructions, but I'd like some reliable documentation to
pull all the pieces together.

I apologize if this group is inappropriate, but it is by far the most
knowledgable on the innerworkings of gcc.

Thanks,
Eric