Static symbols in libgcc

[Alexandre Oliva]

Jeffrey A Law writes:

>   2. Move them into libstdc++.  Shouldn't this just involve moving
>   some functions into libstdc++?  Or to put it another way is
>   there some compelling reason to have these functions in libgcc?

AFAIK, these variables are not exclusively used by the C++ front-end,
so they shouldn't be moved into the C++-specific library.  gcc 2.8.0
was delayed that long in order to move exception handling into the
back-end.

>   3. Declare them in such a way as to only get one copy; instead of
>   a static, can it be a global (yes, there's a namespace pollution
>   issue, but it's worth thinking about).   It could even possibly
>   be made weak global if that helps.

If it's named __gcc_something, it's not an issue, since this name is
reserved, at least in the C language.  Could this be a problem for
other languages?

>   4. Or have a global pointer to a runtime initialized data structure
>   which has the stuff we need.  We have the capability to initialize
>   stuff at program startup, so it shouldn't be that much of a stretch
>   to use it for this purpose.

I don't understand how functions would obtain references to this data
structure.  Wouldn't they need a global symbol or such?

-- 
Alexandre Oliva
mailto:oliva@dcc.unicamp.br mailto:aoliva@acm.org
http://www.dcc.unicamp.br/~oliva
Universidade Estadual de Campinas, SP, Brasil