[Android] The reason why -Bsymbolic is turned on by default

[Andrew Haley]

On 03/29/2013 06:55 PM, Alexander Ivchenko wrote:

> When compiling a shared library with "-mandroid -shared" the option
> -Bsymbolic for linker is turned on by default. What was the reason
> behind that default?  Isn't using of -Bsymbolic somehow dangerous and
> should be avoided..?

Yes indeed, -Bsymbolic is dangerous.

> (as e.g. is explained in the mail from Richard
> Henderson http://gcc.gnu.org/ml/gcc/2001-05/msg01551.html).
> 
> Since there is no (AFAIK) option like -Bno-symbolic we cannot use
> -fno-pic binary with COPY relocations in it (android dynamic loader
> will throw an error when there is COPY relocation against DT_SYMBOLIC
> library..)

Sure, that's true.  If a library is built with -Bsymbolic then you
must build executables PIC.  That's just how it is.

As to why Android turned it on by default -- we are not clairvoyant!
:-)

Andrew.