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Received: by minnie.vk1xwt.ampr.org with NNTP id AA106 ; Thu, 28 Jan 93 16:00:22 EST Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd Path: sserve!manuel.anu.edu.au!munnari.oz.au!spool.mu.edu!howland.reston.ans.net!usc!elroy.jpl.nasa.gov!jato!ufo!kaleb From: kaleb@jpl-devvax.jpl.nasa.gov (Kaleb Keithley) Subject: Re: [386BSD] gcc2 and -fPIC Message-ID: <1993Jan27.172321.14231@jpl-devvax.jpl.nasa.gov> Organization: Jet Propulsion Laboratory (NASA) References: <1993Jan26.210430.27806@serval.net.wsu.edu> <1993Jan27.002600.21136@jpl-devvax.jpl.nasa.gov> <1993Jan27.044627.2756@serval.net.wsu.edu> Date: Wed, 27 Jan 1993 17:23:21 GMT Lines: 48 In article hlu@eecs.wsu.edu (H.J. Lu) writes: >In article kaleb@jpl-devvax.jpl.nasa.gov (Kaleb Keithley) writes: >|> In article hlu@eecs.wsu.edu (H.J. Lu) writes: >|> >In article (Chris G. Demetriou) writes: >|> >|> anybody gotten code compiled w/gcc2's -fPIC to assemble properly >|> >|> (or "at all") under 386bsd? >|> >|> >|> >That is because as on bsd doesn't support PIC yet. That leads to another >|> >question. I believe a.out format is not very good for PIC even with some >|> >patches. Personally, I prefer ELF. The problem is gnu binutils 2.x and >|> >gas do not fully support ELF. I was wondering if anyone has done something >|> >on ELF? >|> >|> Huh? a.out and PIC work pretty good on Sun. I always understood the >|> difference between PIC and non-PIC was the use of relative addressing >|> versus "hard" addressing. I'm sure the assembler is more than capable >|> of handling relative offsets if the compiler generates them correctly. > >Not even SUN uses that a.out format anymore. ELF is the way to go. "...that a.out..." Not everyone has switched to Solaris 2.x! >|> Gcc doesn't grok PIC on any 386 machine, period, e.g. Sun 386i -- at > >You haven't try -fPIC -O on libg++-2.3 yet. > >|> least that's what I was told when I asked gnu.gcc.help. There are patches >|> out there to make gcc generate PIC on 386. > >Those patches are for psudo PIC for SVR3. I don't care SVR3. I want ELF. Actually the patches I'm referring to are for SunOS on Sun386i, which is actually COFF. At the risk of repeating myself, gcc itself doesn't yet support PIC on any 386, irrespective of anything else. >That is precisely why I want PIC. I'like to see PIC/ELF be used in 386bsd >and Linux. I think you're asking for an awful lot. Linus Torvalds, Richard Stallman, and Bill and Lynne Jolitz already have a lot of momentum behind a.out in their respective operating systems. Even if the changes were isolated to only the assembler and linker, I haven't seen any evidence that any of them intend to deviate from that direction. -- Kaleb Keithley kaleb@jpl-devvax.jpl.nasa.gov