Running GCC as root

[Maciej W. Rozycki]

On Mon, 14 Feb 2005, Ian Lance Taylor wrote:

> For the record, this happens because BFD only unlinks the file first
> if the size is non-zero.  BFD considers unlinking the file to avoid
> errors which arise when overwriting a running binary (e.g., on SunOS
> this was permitted by the OS, but could sometimes cause signal
> handlers to fail in the running binary; strange but true).  BFD does
> not unlink an empty file because gcc will create the .o file first in
> make_temp_file, and unlinking the file would cause the same race
> condition which gcc is trying to avoid.  Of course the issue about a
> running binary normally only arises with ld, but gas uses the same
> routine the open the output file.

 Actually gas unlinks files itself:

$ grep unlink gas/*.c
gas/as.c:    unlink (out_file_name);
gas/messages.c:    unlink (out_file_name);
$ 

The second call is the "funny" one I've mentioned -- if you have a look 
there, you'll know what I mean.

  Maciej