> This made me wonder if it might be a good idea to make a configure level > change on arm. This change would have arm targets build position independent > by default unless otherwise specified. And last until we have either a > patched glibc-2.1 or glibc-2.2. Mabey something as simple as a compiler > switch -fnopic? I havn't spent much time thinking about how to make the > change, more the why. So there are likely better implementations.
This has been considered before, and rejected. It is not a bad idea, but for the most part, ARM code is used in embedded systems and this is a poor choice for that type of work. It also does things behind the programmers back, it is better to let them deal with the correct build procedure IMHO. > 2) It will likely be a while until we are running on glibc-2.2. I'll see about getting a fix into 2.1.3 and 2.1.2 RPM's when I get back to work. It looks like an update is required now anyway to fix an security advisory on ld-linux.so from Caldera. > 3) I'm not aware of any problems that will be caused by having all objects > (and hence libraries) made position independent. Poorer code generated for static executables; useless register loads. Results in a performance penalty, larger code size. Scott
