making static linkage useful (oh the horror!)

[Andrew Haley]

Adam Megacz writes:
 > 
 > Andrew Haley <aph@redhat.com> writes:
 > > I am in favour of a static linkage mechanism that is not broken.
 > 
 > This is selective, creative redefinition of the word "broken".

Well, in my opinion a mechanism that breaks a number of significant
APIs is broken.  I am somewhat surprised that this is a contentious
defintion of "broken", but there's no point arguing about the
defintions of words.

 > The -fno-bounds-check option "breaks" gcj by deviating from the JLS,
 > yet we still allow it.

Uh, sure.  I don't think there is any way to implement
-fno-bounds-check without deviating from the JLS.

 > I want static compilation to have the same status and be treated
 > the same way as -fno-bounds-check.

I understand.

 > Why is -fno-bounds-check okay, but not-fully-JLS-compliant static
 > linkage isn't?

Well, -fno-bounds-check doesn't disable any APIs.

Besides, -fno-bounds-check is IMO not okay: AFAIK it's really a kludge
because we don't eliminate array bounds checks in the compiler.  We
should fix that.

Andrew.