is -fPIC safe for executable programs, or must -fPIE be used?

[Jeff Law]

On 03/24/2016 01:21 PM, Jeffrey Walton wrote:
> One of the GCC devs explained why its OK a few years ago, but I can't
> find the bug report with the explanation. I just use -fPIC all the
> time unless its i686 because the GOT pointer basically reserves EBX.
> On i686 it becomes a tradeoff because you lose a register, so you may
> not want -fPIC/-fPIE at all.
Actually EBX is no longer reserved on i686 when generating PIC code.  I 
believe that code went into gcc-5.


jeff