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From: Peter Dufault <dufault@hda.com>
Message-Id: <199602140209.VAA23082@hda.com>
Subject: Re: Q: Somebody working on more recent binutils ?
To: nate@sri.MT.net (Nate Williams)
Date: Tue, 13 Feb 1996 21:09:14 -0500 (EST)
Cc: mheller@student.uni-kl.de, hackers@freebsd.org
In-Reply-To: <199602132328.QAA24481@rocky.sri.MT.net> from "Nate Williams" at Feb 13, 96 04:28:00 pm
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> 
> > I'd like to know if someone is porting gas/ld 2.6 or 2.5.x ?
> 
> Gas works already, ld is not going to happen anytime soon, if at all.
> 
> > To have a more recent gas/ld than the ones coming with the
> > distribution is absolutely necessary for running g++ 2.7.2
> > andd libg++2.7.1 because g++ needs the .weak symbols in 
> > some circumstances to produce the 'right' code.
> 
> Are you absolutely *sure*?  According to recent reports posted to this
> list (today or yesterday) it isn't necessary.  All that's required is to
> remove the creation of .weak symbols by gcc2.7.2.

All I really know so far is that Ptolemy builds and at least some
demos run without the .weak symbol support.  I was just going to test
things some more.  I'd sure like the definitive
answer on .weak symbols and the need in g++.

> > If nobody does it, is there any piece of information available,
> > what's been changed in the sources to adopt gas/ld 1.x.x for
> > FreeBSD ?
> 
> The version of ld in FreeBSD is a *very* old version (1.X).  It has been
> *heavily* hacked to support shared libraries.  The current binutils is
> at version 2, which is *radically* different from version 1, so it's not
> a simple matter of 'updating' the bits.
> 
> There are folks who are good at this who have already looked at the code
> and went *YUCK*, so I suspect you won't find anyone willing to do the
> work unless you've got $$ to pony-up for the project.  (And, you still
> might not find anyone willing.)

I don't know, Nate.  I think the need to run the new g++ will outweigh
any "yuckiness" in the job if we really need to hack in .weak support.
I don't know what a weak symbol is - but it probably isn't that bad
to hack weak support into our linker if we have to.

-- 
Peter Dufault               Real-Time Machine Control and Simulation
HD Associates, Inc.         Voice: 508 433 6936
dufault@hda.com             Fax:   508 433 5267