need for flag for incompatible-changes

[Fred Eisele]

Paul Koning wrote:

> >>>>> "Joe" == Joe Buck <jbuck@synopsys.com> writes:
>
>  >> I wonder about the comment that even GNU ld often would only be
>  >> able to say "sorry, incompatible object files".  Some things, like
>  >> naming (namespace support) clearly aren't like that.
>
>  Joe> We not only plan to add namespace support to the compiler, but
>  Joe> we then need to redo libstdc++ to put the whole standard library
>  Joe> in the std namespace.  That's what breaks compatibility, and it
>  Joe> doesn't show up at the level of object file version -- it is a
>  Joe> change in the API.
>
> Then maybe you need more version numbers.
>
> Clearly, if the names of the functions change (due to namespaces) but
> their calling conventions did not (same argument types etc.) then the
> linker can map old names to new names if it is told to do so.

Isn't this the kind of de(re)mangling that <collect> was invented for?