*BSD News Article 10446


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From: hlu@eecs.wsu.edu (H.J. Lu)
Subject: Re: [386BSD] gcc2 and -fPIC
Message-ID: <1993Jan27.185636.8873@serval.net.wsu.edu>
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Organization: School of EECS, Washington State University
References: <1993Jan26.210430.27806@serval.net.wsu.edu> <1993Jan27.002600.21136@jpl-devvax.jpl.nasa.gov> <1993Jan27.044627.2756@serval.net.wsu.edu> <1993Jan27.172321.14231@jpl-devvax.jpl.nasa.gov>
Date: Wed, 27 Jan 93 18:56:36 GMT
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In article <1993Jan27.172321.14231@jpl-devvax.jpl.nasa.gov>, kaleb@jpl-devvax.jpl.nasa.gov (Kaleb Keithley) writes:

[...]

|> >|> 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

They seem to be the same thing. SVR3 uses COFF.

|> is actually COFF.  At the risk of repeating myself, gcc itself doesn't
|> yet support PIC on any 386, irrespective of anything else.
|> 


I believe gcc supports PIC for SVR4. I didn't say there was no bug in PIC
support.

|> >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.
|> 

I know that. After having worked on the shared library under Linux, I am
convinced that ELF is the much better solution for dynamic linking. I have
been pushing it very hard. I will do whatever I can to help it.


H.J.